The mystery and curse of the crying boy portraits

Maybe someone from the UK has some imput on this.

The Tale of the Cursed Crying Boy
It was in 1985 that The Sun, which was the most popular tabloid newspaper in the UK and throughout much of the English-speaking world at the time, ran a story in its September 4 edition titled “Blazing Curse of the Crying Boy” and explored how there had been many houses in Yorkshire, where the owners had at least one print of the Crying Boy, that had burned down, and yet the painting mysteriously survived unscathed. This was reported by Alan Wilkinson, a fire station officer, who had personally logged as many as 50 Crying Boy fires up until that time, which dated back to 1973. For this reason, no firefighter would ever allow a Crying Boy print in his own home. One was even offered to Wilkinson upon his retirement, presumably as a joke, and he turned the gift down. Indeed, as a joke, he attempted to hang one up in the firehouse that he oversaw, but his superiors demanded that he take it down immediately upon finding out.