The following story is not my own, this is my dad's story which he told me about recently. This happened a year after I was born.

My dad saw the painting at a local car boot sale. It was of a crying boy, that my dad said looked exactly like me. Seeing images of it later on, I didn't think so but it's what he thought. Anyway, my dad remembered that the seller seemed a little bit nervous when he was selling the painting, almost as if he couldn't wait to get rid of it. My dad thought it was weird but just ignored it.

He took the painting home and hung it in the hallway. Guests to the house thought the painting was creepy and they felt uneasy. Multiple people begged my dad to get rid of it, but he ignored them, and kept it.

It was a week after that something happened. A small fire started in the kitchen. Neither my mum or my dad had been cooking anything, and they were always very careful, making sure all electrical appliances were turned off when not in use, especially when they were going out. Luckily, my dad was able to stop it.

The next day my parents hired an electrician to look into their kitchen appliances and see if there was a fault. Nothing. There were no faults, no reasons why the fire should have started. In fact, if it weren't for the charred kitchen surfaces, you wouldn't have believed there'd have been a fire at all.

It was accepted as a freak accident and my parents moved on with their lives raising me. They started to notice some odd behaviour from me, like I was communicating with someone, laughing and giggling. Of course, I couldn't speak properly at this age so it's not like they could ask me what was happening. This kept going on for weeks. Eventually my dad set up a camera overnight to record me and what he saw next chilled him to the bone.

When my dad reviewed the camera footage he saw me, standing up in my crib, holding onto the bars communicating with a shadowy figure the size and shape of a young boy. From that moment on, I was brought in to sleep with my parents.

It was now months after the shadow figure incident and my dad had seen nothing. No shadow figures, no weird behaviour from me. Everything seemed calm. On this particular night, mum and dad were asleep when they were both woken up by the smoke alarm going off. In a panic, my dad ran out to see what was happening whilst my mum stayed in the bedroom to look after me.

When he ran out of the bedroom he was immediately taken aback by a large wave of intense heat. The kitchen and part of the hallway were ablaze. My dad phoned for the fire department, got my mum and me and tried to escape. By this time the entire hallway was on fire, there was no way to the door. My dad rushed us into the living room and ended up having to break down the window.

By the time we escaped, our entire house was ablaze. All of our possessions, everything gone. Looking back, my dad remembers seeing the ghostly figure of a young boy by the broken window staring at him. The boy was the one in the painting, and just like that painting he was crying. Eventually the fire seemed to engulf him and he couldn't be seen.

When the firemen arrived it took them awhile to get the fire under control. What was left afterwards was a burnt and blackened husk. Surprisingly the painting of the crying boy was the only thing to have survived. They handed it back to my dad, who promptly threw it away. Nothing happened after that time.

My dad had taken pictures of the painting and has later shown them to me, which is when he told me his story. Even those pictures I just found incredibly creepy.

This leads me to now, I am 25 years old and am just about to move into my new house with my partner. We have received some house warming gifts from friends and family. Most are things like plates and cups. Useful things. But one of our friends handed as large rectangular parcel. He didn't tell is what it was so we assumed it was a mirror. It was only when I opened it that I saw what it was. Inside the parcel was the painting of the crying boy.

EDIT 1: https://imgur.com/a/6Wjjzju My dad took this picture soon after he got it.