Oct 31, 2011: Stones with Faces
 

http://cellar.org/2011/more stone faces SMALL.jpg

Is this okay as an IOtD?

We moved to our farm three years ago. Now and then we found a stone in the garden with a face painted on it. Cute, we thought. We imagined one of the previous owners had painted one for each person in their family and placed them around the garden. A few months ago we emptied the soil out of an old bath tub that was functioning as part of the old vegie garden. As I dug my hands into the soil I grabbed onto what I thought were potatoes, but they turned out to be more stones with faces. Lots of them, in all sorts of sizes. It was a tad creepy! And then last weekend, at the back of the wood shed, I found an old bucket, sunk into the ground, full of more stones with faces. Here's a shot of them. Why why why would you go to the bother of painting faces onto stones - all different - and then bury them? I feel a horror movie plot coming on...

Why?

Voodoo.

Those are pretty cool, sandy. I think it's some sort of message...I like it. I might start doing it here at my house.

Those look like happy faces - not tortured, voodoo faces.

I think it's a good omen! Can you research the history of the farm?

Wow!

What a fun mystery!

Creepy. A perfect IotD for Halloween.

I think it's one for every body they buried in the yard.

Better not dig too deep!

Yep, but they only started looking happy once we dug them up. When they first emerged they looked pretty frightened and confused.

Yep, that's our theory, too. But before they die their souls are harvested and trapped in a stone. We fear we may find more mass graves.

And some stones' paint is peeling off; what would be the meaning of that?

But seriously, I'm kind of concerned that exposure to the light may make them deteriorate. On the other hand, I can't bring myself to bury them again!

Well Brianna, yes and no. I live in a veeeery small town. The last owners had an extremely nasty split up. The old bloke moved to another town, and the woman is still local, but looks slightly terrified each time I see her and go up for a chat. Word has it she is still unable to get over losing her beloved farm (due to the bloke having drunk and gambled it all away) and avoids any discussion about it. The owners before that moved much further away, and are considered incommunicado due to something that happened here, so not sure how I would track them down. I've started asking neighbours if they know about the stones, but none of them knew about them. I am curious, but will have to tread carefully. At least I know they're not Aboriginal artifacts, which is when you get into very blurry territory about correct handling etc.

I was wondering if they were a fad at some time long ago, like macrame. The style of the face painting looks old fashioned to me, but I wouldn't know how to date them.

Do the words Wolf Creek mean anything to you? ;)

I'm just going to go right out on a limb and suggest someone with a major mental illness lived in that house at some time.

yeah, it's not much, but it's all I got.

As far as you know, was there a childless woman ever living in the house?

Oh, and let us know if you've disturbed the restless and probably malevolent spirit that those were keeping down, would you?

Yes, that's definitely creepy and appropriate for today. Thanks!

One halloween when I was in HS, we had grown pumpkins in the garden and had a bunch of them sitting on the front porch, for sale.

One night I heard some noise on the front porch. I turned the porch light on and looked out...most of the pumpkins had been carved (not even removing the innards, just some fast face making, and one that had the word "beer" carved into it) and they were all lined up facing the front door.

I thought it was pretty good. I'm pretty sure it was my neighber...the Neighbor "Hood" who I actually kind of liked even if everyone else called him Damian because he, well, looked like Damian!

The eyes are most striking to me. They seem so . . . I don't know . . . piercing?

It also seems like there is more than one rock of the same person, or there are several who look similar. Such as the girl with the dark whisps of hair.

I also see more than one race - such as the guy with the glasses in the 2nd row from the bottom. There seem to be two of him side by side.

I can imagine how weird it would be to think you are pulling up potatoes and you pull up these rocks! It does seem kind of creepy since you don't know the history.

It's amazing that they have stayed in such good condition after having been buried for so long. You would think the water and bacteria in the soil would have deteriorated the paints more than they did.

(Why did the initial post come out wider than the rest of the posts?)

Sandy, check out this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsider_art

Have you heard of Outsider art? You could be sitting on a gold mine. Get that to a proper art gallery.

The burying to me suggests the desire to put it out of one's mind, to get rid of it but not in a destructive way. Many forms of therapy suggest turning a stressful event or person into a totem of some sort and physically removing or breaking it to help eliminate the mental fixation. I'm picturing a person--probably a woman--who has a difficult time with anger, or anxiety, and has been taught to habitually "bury" whatever issue is bothering her at a given time. Especially since many of the faces do seem to be repeats.

Some of them appear to be stained with blood.

The shape of the rocks is pretty uniform. Is there an obvious local source?
All blue eyes.
Simple technique, maybe minutes to produce.
I'd guess a kids' game with no value to prevent disposal in the yard.
By all means, let us know if you find anything more about them.

That's what I said.

Voodoo.





:)

they really are very cool. I'd have some local art person look at them like footy said. They are very...haunting :ghost:

That is so awesome. How very interesting.

And with those two sentences you have scared me more than 98% of horror films I have ever watched.

What an amazing and timely IoTD.

Although if this was a film right now I'd be moaning at the screen, "Just move out! Please! Go!"
Keep yourself safe.

Rock face
 

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net...79098172_n.jpg

My daughter created this one when she was a little girl, I keep it in the flower bed and think of her when I see it.

Definitely not from the farm itself, but we're not far from the coast, and I'm pretty sure there are stones like that on the beaches.

:D We live in Fish Creek!

You know, I think the last woman WAS childless. I'll check into that. But most seem like adults, with the smaller ones more like kids.

The stones themselves are grey, and the face side has been painted with a base colour for the skin. They skin colour ranges from a yellowish to a light brown to peach-pink. So I got the impression it was intended to indicate different races too.

Incidentally, the majority seem to be female, but some are definnitely male.

And since you're our IotD gal:
it's because the photo size was too big. I had already reduced it by half, and thought that was enough, but it's still too big.

:eek: OMG burns334! It's good you know your daughter did that and that it gives you happy memories. If I had found one like that amongst my stones I would truly have seriously considered moving out!

Sandy, she was 12 or 13 yrs old and majored in art in college. I looked at your stones as just some child fooling around with paints. I'll show yours to her and see what she thinks. I'm not really sure she remembers the stone I have.

She was quite precocious.

Wow, whoah, whooooo! Freaky, creepy, yet fascinating.

Building on what Wolf, Brianna and Clod have said, perhaps the mentally ill repressive woman doing symbolic self-psychotherapy was not just childless, but also had had a number of miscarriages.

[/makingstuffup]

They are clearly painted with a brush, and the detail is so steady and fine that I can't see them having been done by a child, even though the style is simplistic.

And hey, it just occurred to me that your daughter put Amy Winehouses's face on the stone! The shadow gives it a nice beehive hairdo.

Also, I just found this link, in particular the quote But not in a bucket buried in the woodshed or in a bathtub full of soil, I notice.

Sometimes, when I read about some ancient curiosity being dug up, I wonder if it isn't anything significant or mystical at all, and is just something banal that somehow lasted better than other more significant things that were done at the time, e.g. maybe the cavemen kids used more durable paints to draw bison on the cave walls, and the ones the adults did - incredibly realistic ones, or ones with explanatory diagrams, got lost because they preferred to use other paint.

Your picture shows the well-rounded stones with the faces and angular broken stones in your soil.
Are there any unpainted but rounded stones on the farm? Or are the painted ones the only round ones?

I'm trying to establish whether the person grabbed whatever stones were handy, or went and got stones and brought them home to paint, or went somewhere and painted the stones and brought the finished ones back.

The angular ones you see are in gravel that was placed around that bed. Our land doesn't have many stones in it, certainly none like the round smooth ones. But we're close to the coast and you can find a lot of those round smooth stones there.

I feel compelled to get to the bottom of this now for all of you as well as me! Will do my best in the next few weeks. I think if I phoned locals to ask they would put me on the "weird newcomers" list once and for all - we've only been here for 4 years.

This is so interesting! I want to know more!

That was my first impression, too.

My image is a bit different.

I picture a male (in overalls), not quite a "man," who buried them surreptitiously. Maybe embarrassed, or to hide them, or to keep them safe in a "taking care of them" kind of way.

I can imagine them being painted as the happy souls of people who were possibly hurt in some way by the painter. He was sorry he hurt them or wanted to remember them in their happy, or nomal, way.

Or, maybe they are just people he loved and admired, but in a quiet, shy way.

(Ooooh, my imagination is running away with me!)

It feels very 1940-1950ish to me. Maybe even earlier.

I wonder if we'll ever know?

It is fun to see the different impressions we all have!

Sandy, I think they are just the medium the artist worked with, many of the faces are the same person, maybe you could sort them by person and see how many different people are there.

Very interesting idea.

Lay them all out on a table, in rows of similar faces. You'll see how many different ones there are, and how many times each one comes up, which would give you an idea of who/what this person was obsessing about most. Are there lots of childlike ones? Lots of adult-looking ones? male or female? That sort of thing.

ETA: please do this before 2012, or after it, but not during it. This is the sort of thing that could open a portal to an alternate dimension or something.
Don't arrange them in a pentacle. Please.

I'm the sort of person you should NEVER say "whatever you do, don't touch that buton". So now you've done it.

I'll see about time to sort out the faces. It's farm here guys! A small one by Australian standards perhaps, but still a farm, with weeds and fencing and hanimals and so on.

One thing: I've noticed that the paint is definitely affected by being exposed to the sun and/or air. I've thought of burying them again, but then it will just happen all over again to someone else.

Hmmm . . . Maybe that's part of the cycle of life for the stones . . .

Is it time to start calling them "soul-eggs" yet? :D

And perhaps you could drape a hessian bag or something over the stones to protect them from the sun, SP. I'd take care of these things until you've actually decide not to. Don't neglect them, I mean.

You wouldn't want to make them angry.

I like that - Soul Eggs. Sounds appropriate. And kinda creepy.

It's probably some perfectly innocent thing, like some poor person was an invalid and passing their time painting, or recovering and painting. Then someone buried them because they were creeping them out.

Maybe someone thought that if they buried the rocks it would take the paint off of them and return them to regular rocks.

That's just what they want you to think...

Zen

You are at least partly responsible for one of my disturbing dreams last night.
The other is an author with similar ideas, but sadly not delivered as succinctly.

Please desist or I shall have to sue you for distress.

Yrs sinc,
etc etc etc

Tail post, but did we ever figure this out?

It's still a live mystery. It has only been a week.

It's a gneiss little puzzle, if we cobble together the evidence something should come up. Keep at it, shale be right. ;)

I live in rural Australia and things move slowly here. If I try to rush about and get people to tell me what they know about it, it just won't work. As I previously mentioned, I can't ask the last owner of this place as she is still suffering a sort of post traumatic stress at having had to leave this place and - even though it had nothing to do with us, we just bought the place - whenever I see her, her face freezes with a smile and then she flees, so I think I'd be pushing things if I asked about the stones, as it could indeed be something she, or her greater family, did here. I plan to suss it out with our neighbours and those of her friends that I know. I've already asked two lots of neighbours (and bear in mind that our neighbours are not all THAT close geographically) and they knew nothing of it. I considered getting the local newspaper to take a photo and ask in an article if anyone knew about them, but my worries about the last owner again make me hesitant.

Rest assured that I shall most definitely post a message as soon as I find out anything at all!

I wouldn't do the newspaper thing. If this is to do with some personal psychotherapy, it would be very embarrassing to have it all come out publicly.

In fact, this might be why the previous own freaks out when she sees you. "She must have found them. Has she found them? How many has she found? Dear God, does she know?"

Sorry, Sundae.

Can you get one of the neighbors that the previous owner isn't scared of to ask?

Yes yes yes, people! I promise I will keep on trying!

:D

OMG, sounds like The Wicker Man (the original, of course--I don't acknowledge the existense of a remake).

I hated the original, also picnic at hanging rock.

There is no remake.
Only some bizarre DVD footage of Nicholas Cage punching a woman.

Have we spread into a general opinions on rocks in Australia now? Or am I missing a connection?

Will see the ex-owner tonight at a meeting and will try my best to raise the issue with her in a casual sort of way... "Oh hi, would you like a biscuit with that cuppa, and what's with all the creepy stones with faces?" something like that.

Stay tuned.

Spooky movie ... Wickerman ... picnic at hanging rock.

I wouldn't raise the issue this time. Build rapport. If she comes out with it, great, if not, some other time.

ETA: or, sod it, bring a couple of the stones and drop them on the table. "WTF are these?" :lol:

That's actually a good idea, Zen--bring just one with you, say you found it and wanted to give it back to her in case it was a little memento lost in the yard by one of her children (or nieces/nephews if she has no kids.) That way, she doesn't have to panic thinking you found all of them, if it turns out they're hers and she's embarrassed.

But you're half a day ahead of us, so I'm too late anyway. Eager to hear what she said, sandy!

Think of it as continental drift. It happens a lot, and not just in Australia.

We know all there is to know about rocks in Australia.
Men At Work and Uluru.

(drum roll....)

Okay, so I went to the meeting, met said lady, and basically did what ZenGum suggested: pulled one of the stones out of my pocket, and said "o hai, WTF are these?" And she told me.

But my other half says it would just spoil everything if I told you. As Winnie-the-Pooh wisely pointed out: there is a moment just before you eat the honey that is better than actually eating the honey.

:lol:

sandy, you are awesome!

You certainly did.

I said something like this to my Dad last time we were up at his place.

His farm is on the side of a mountain that was a fairly recently active (in geological terms) volcano, so there's rocks everywhere on his place. In order to create better grazing for his cattle and ease of access in the little bush basher he drives around in, he chucks all the rocks into piles about the place.

Anyway, I said that one day when a new age of civilization comes along, they'll find these piles of rocks and attribute some meaning to them rather than just say, hey, that's just a pile of rocks.

Sandy, you've got us on the edge of our seats, do tell!!!!!!!!!

SP - this must be important; burns334 has only posted 11 times in seven years, and four of those have been in this thread.

Maybe Burns is the owner of the stones and has been waiting all this time for this thread to appear...