In December 1932, a down and out Hungarian named Rezső Seress was trying to make a living as a songwriter in Paris, but failing miserably. All of his compositions had failed to impress the music publishers of France, but Seress carried on chasing his dream regardless, determined to become an internationally famous songwriter. His girlfriend had constant rows with him over the insecurity of his ambitious life. She urged him to get a full time nine to five job, but Seress was uncompromising. He told her that he was to be a songwriter or a hobo, and that was that. One afternoon, matters finally came to a head. Seress and his fiancee had a fierce row over his utter failure as a composer, and the couple parted with angry words. On the day after the row - which happened to be a Sunday - Seress sat at the piano in his apartment gazing morosely through the window at the Parisian skyline. Outside, storm clouds gathered in the gray sky, and soon a heavy rain began to pelt down. "What a gloomy Sunday." Seress said to himself as he tinkled on the piano's ivories, and quite suddenly, his hands began to play a strange melancholy melody that seemed to encapsulate the way he was feeling and the dispiriting weather. "Yes, Gloomy Sunday. That will be the name of my new song," muttered Seress excitedly and he grabbed a pencil and wrote the notes down on an old postcard. Thirty minutes later he had completed the song.*

Gloomy Sunday was nicknamed the Hungarian Suicide Song, perhaps for good reason. It is blamed for being connected to more suicides than any other song in history. In the original lyrics of Gloomy Sunday, written by lyricist and poet László Jávor, the singer is asking his dead lover to join him at his own planned funeral. The song seems to allude to suicide, as he longs to be with his love in the afterlife, and appears to be taking matters into his own hands to get there.

The story surrounding Gloomy Sunday has become somewhat of a legend, embellished to a certain extent. Many of the details are not verifiable. Nonetheless, the song and story have been widely publicized in popular newspapers and magazines for its supposed eerie connection with many suicides.

At least eighteen suicide deaths in Hungary are reported to have had close links with Gloomy Sunday. In the Time Magazine article, “Music: Suicide Song,” published March 30, 1936, the author (unnamed) described a number of suicides. A Hungarian shoemaker by the name of Joseph Keller left a note at the scene of his suicide quoting some of the Gloomy Sunday lyrics. Several bodies were found in the Danube with their hands clutching the song’s sheet music. Two people shot themselves while hearing a band play the song, and others had been found to have ended their own lives while listening to it. The song was banned in Hungary.

However, the reports are not isolated to Hungary. “In the 1930s, both Time and the New York Times reported on suicides and attempted suicides in the US connected to ‘Gloomy Sunday.’ The song was banned on the BBC until 2002, and according to some reports, certain outlets in the US refused to play the song, fearing it was somehow responsible for these suicides.” (Lauren Davis, “Could This Gloomy Song Really Inspire a Person to Commit Suicide?”). The legend refers to more than a hundred suicides resulting from the Gloomy Sunday lure to the “other side.”

• In Berlin, a young man requested a band play "Gloomy Sunday" but after the numbder was performed he went home and blasted himself in the head with a revolver, after complaining to relatives that he felt severely depressed by the melody of a new song he couldn't get out of his head.
• A week later in the same city, a young female shop assistant was found hung in her flat. Police found a copy of the sheet music to Gloomy Sunday in her bedroom.
• Two days after that tragedy, a young secretary in New York gassed herself. In her suicide note she requested Gloomy Sunday be played at her funeral.
• Weeks later another New Yorker, aged 82 jumped to his deth from the window of his seventh story apartment after playing the song on his piano.
• Around the same time, a teenager in Rome who heard the unlucky tune jumped off a bridge to his death.
• In North London, a women had been playing a recording of the song over and over much to the annoyance of her neighbors. The neighbors hammered on her door and when she did not answer they broke the door in. They found the record player stylus stuck in a groove and the woman dead in a chair from and overdose of barbiturates.

After months of a steady stream of bizarre and disturbing deaths connected to the song, the chiefs at the BBC were persuaded to ban the song from the airwaves.**

Reszo did not escape the adverse effects of his song. He wrote to his ex-fiancee pleading for a reconciliation only to find out that she had poisoned herself. By her side was a copy to the sheet music to Gloomy Sunday.

This all took place when historically there was a climate for depression in the world. The Great Depression had begun and suicide rates were skyrocketing in the U.S. and Hungary. Additionally, antisemitism was taking hold across Europe. He didn’t know it when he composed Gloomy Sunday, but Rezső Seress would later be interned at a Nazi labor camp in Ukraine. He survived the camp, but his mother did not. Prior to becoming a musician Seress had lost his career as a circus performer through injury. He was struggling to make ends meet. (“Rezső Seress.” Wikipedia. August 2, 2013.) This set the perfect (gloomy) tone for Seress to compose Gloomy Sunday. And he did so by putting his heart and soul, his sadness, and his disappointment into the composition. Seress composed the song in the sad key of C minor, and the music alone was said to be enough to make a person extremely depressed or suicidal. Then came the wretched lyrics on top of the music.

Seress eventually succumbed to his own depression, and jumped from his apartment building in Budapest. He killed himself just after his 69th birthday. (“Rezső Seress.” Wikipedia. August 26, 2013.)

However, he did leave us with his thoughts:

I stand in the midst of this deadly success as an accused man. This fatal fame hurts me. I cried all of the disappointments of my heart into this song, and it seems that others with feelings like mine have found their own hurt in it.

Many sad songs have been written. Many songs that were not sad, but that may have been about suicide have been written. Many are blamed for having actually caused suicides, however, most of those were isolated incidents. Why is Gloomy Sundayarguably the most suicide-provoking song in history?

Is it because two men, each suffering from his own profound problems, conveyed their personal despair to vulnerable listeners through Gloomy Sunday? If it were not for this song would these depressed individuals have taken their own lives, or did the song drive them over the edge?

Could it be that Gloomy Sunday was created with the perfect combination of elements for one to welcome suicide? After all, in the despair of loss through a loved one’s death perhaps the listener finds acknowledgement and consolation. In the ideas of suicide and reunion with a loved one on the “other side” a person finds comfort and hope. Merge these elements with a dreary economic and political environment, and perhaps you have the perfect cocktail for mass suicide. It’s almost too depressing to think about.

* Thomas Slemen, Strange But True, pg. 27

** Thomas Slemen, Strange But True, pgs. 28-29

Other data http://www.historicmysteries.com/gloomy-sunday-suicide-song/