Spooky Sunday: Haunted Dolls

Well hello again, spoopy babies. I decided to make this one a spooky Sunday instead of a Saturday, but fear not, we are still getting our due dosage of spoop and alliteration in during the precious weekend hours and this weekend we are discussing everyone’s favorite…creepy dolls.

Creepy dolls are a whole mood right now, with the return of everyone’s favorite Good Guy in the new Child’s Play movie and the Annabelle sequel that no one asked for out in theaters simultaneously. Over the past couple years, we’ve seen creepy or haunted dolls come to the forefront more and more, in the form of collections or creepy eBay purchases from YouTubers like Graveyard Girl or Loey Lane, and on shows like the Ghost Adventures spin off Deadly Possessions on the Travel Channel. You can even visit some of the most famous haunted dolls in “the doll room” at Zak Bagans’ Haunted Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Personally, I have a bit of a spooky soft spot for creepy dolls. Yes, I have a couple of little creepy doll heads sitting around my house, and I absolutely adore Chucky, and don’t even get me started on Tiffany as my spirit animal. (I know, I say a lot of things are my spirit animal. I’m a #spookybasic.) I haven’t seen the new Chucky, but old school Chucky is an absolute classic.

What I’m saying here is: creepy dolls aren’t anything new. They’ve been around spooking people for a long time, and they’re probably not going anywhere anytime soon. But now that creepy/haunted/weird things are becoming more and more popular—and I will do my absolute best to restrain my inner “I was into this before it was cool” hipster version of myself here—they are coming to the forefront a lot more often.

So what is it about dolls specifically that weirds us out so much?

Part of it is the sheer humanness of dolls. When an object modeled after our own selves supposedly takes on these evil and horrible qualities, it’s even more creepy because we can picture it moving like us and talking like us—but with nefarious or demonic intentions.

Another part of why dolls are so creepy is the juxtaposition of something innocent and childlike with something malevolent and possessed. Dolls are a staple of childhood playtime and have been for centuries, so of course we associate dolls with children. Not to mention, dolls (most of them anyway) are created in the image of children—they look like babies or toddlers, and then to hear people say that these babies and toddlers are haunted, causing people to get hurt or die, or speaking demonic voices (just as a few examples) naturally just makes people uncomfortable.

On top of all that, dolls just happen to decay in such a perfectly creepy way. Older dolls were often made of porcelain and the way they crack and get discolored over time makes them look so weird that even if it’s just a totally normal doll that happens to be old, it’s easy to stick it with a fake backstory about how the original owner gruesomely died and ever since the doll has been mysteriously moving on its own and causing doors to slam and voices to whisper in the night and then slap it on eBay for $1000 and wait for someone with a penchant for the spooky and an excess of spending money to snap it up for their very own collection.

So, keeping in mind all the reasons why dolls just kind of inherently weird us out, let’s take a look at a few of the most popular and most haunted creepy dolls in the world today.

Scroll on for just enough glassy eyes, cracked facades, and disembodied cackles to make you wonder if we’re talking about creepy dolls or visiting your sad Aunt Irma for Thanksgiving and listening to her judge everything about your life while her own falls apart at the seams.

Wait, what?

Just…just scroll down for a collection of haunted dolls, okay?

Peggy the Doll

If you have an interest in scary stuff or dolls, you’ve probably already heard of Peggy. Arguably the most famous and sometimes heralded as the most evil of haunted dolls, this blonde haired blue eyed doll kind of looks like an early version of an American Girl doll. But she’s hardly as sweet as our childhood pals Kirsten and Felicity.

Apparently, Peggy is possessed, and has a pretty serious effect on people. I’ve seen some sources say that she is possessed by a demon, but others say she is possessed by a woman who died in 1946 of a breathing issue such as asthma.

One of her previous owners said that the entire time she owned Peggy and had her in her home, she had horrible nightmares, fevers, and hallucinations, and would wake up shaking and sweating. No matter where she moved the doll, she couldn’t stop the issues, so she eventually ended up sending her away to a paranormal investigator who agreed to take her off her hands.

But it isn’t just one person who reported these problems. Lots of people who have associated with Peggy or been around Peggy have reported that they’ve had nightmares, been tormented by unseen forces, and oftentimes have felt physically sick, even going so far as being overcome by nausea and vomiting. The most serious and scary case is of a woman claiming that just a few minutes after she looked at Peggy, she actually had a heart attack, which she believes was caused by the doll itself. A lot of people even claim that Peggy can have this effect just from looking at pictures or videos of her on their phones, computers, or TV screens.

Now whether or not this is a form of mild mass hysteria or the power of suggestion (which is way more powerful than people think it is), I don’t know for sure. I’ve looked at lots of pictures of Peggy the Doll and while I totally admit she is a bit creepy—her eyes and that dead gaze kind of weird me out—I’ve never felt ill or anything afterward, and she hasn’t made me feel anxiety, because I already have terrible anxiety so that’s kind of just always there.

Perhaps seeing her in person would be a lot different. Popular storytime YouTuber Loey Lane recently visited The Haunted Museum in Vegas, where Peggy now resides, and claimed she had panic attack like symptoms and heard demonic voices and growling and grumbling when in the room with Peggy.

There’s no way to know for sure unless we visit her ourselves, but there’s no shortage of testimonies from people claiming that seeing Peggy really messed with their mental and physical health!

Harold the Haunted Doll

Let’s just get this out of the way right off the bat—Harold looks…a little gross. He almost looks a bit moldy. This doll has been through some stuff. No doubt about it, this particular toy baby has seen better days. This particular brand of deterioration—and the fact that Harold’s soft, once huggable torso remains permanently naked—makes this doll just overall look really creepy. This creepy look made him the perfect eBay listing back in 2003 when he kind of kicked off the whole “haunted dolls on eBay” trend. A lot of people claim he’s the first haunted doll to be sold on eBay (though I guess there’s really no way to actually prove that), and people claim he has moved on his own, spoken, laughed, and threatened people. It’s said that Harold is either haunted or cursed, and people report similar feelings as when they’re around the Peggy doll—nausea, chest pain, anxiety, general sickness, and you know…overall being really creeped out and uncomfortable. Supposedly one of the doll’s previous owners was told by a priest that the doll is possessed and the only solution would be to burn it, but when he put it in a fire, it just wouldn’t burn. (Okay…) Could having been lit on fire in the past contribute to his deterioration and the way he looks?

Harold’s current owner has self-published a book about Harold and his haunted history, and Harold also sometimes goes on trips to visit paranormal investigators and psychics or be on television shows, so it doesn’t look like his spooky journey is ending anytime soon.

The Real Life Annabelle

You’ve probably seen the movie Annabelle or The Conjuring or any of the other seemingly dozens of movies in that whole franchise. And yes, they are based on supposedly true events. But did you know that in real life, Annabelle was just a plain old Raggedy Ann doll? She was a far cry from the almost laughable porcelain nightmare that looks like it faceplanted into a tray of clown makeup from the movie adaptations, and was instead a very unassuming rag doll with that trademark bright red yarn hair.

I mean, I literally had one of these—and her partner in crime, Raggedy Andy—as a little kid. Good thing mine didn’t turn out to be haunted AF.

Or was it?

In case you haven’t heard this story before, the real Annabelle was originally owned by a nursing student named Donna (something we see a brief glimpse of in her namesake movie), but when she brought the doll home, strange things started happening. The doll would move on its own, sometimes just shifting positions, and sometimes moving to an entirely different room while Donna and her roommate were out of the house. Once, they found it somehow kneeling on a chair. This was weird because, as anyone who has owned a Raggedy Ann doll or any large rag doll knows, you can’t really bend their stuffed legs into a kneeling position, so Donna and her friends had no idea how it got like that.

They would also find little notes in the house saying things like “Help Me” or “Help Lou” (Lou being one of the people living in the house where Donna lived) scribbled on little pieces of parchment paper, which they started to believe were from the doll. Donna took the doll to a psychic to see if she could get to the bottom of the strange occurrences and the psychic told her that the doll was—I think you know where I’m going with this—possessed, this time by the spirit of a girl named none other than Annabelle.

Eventually, famed and hotly debated paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren took the Annabelle doll off Donna’s hands when she couldn’t handle the supernatural activity and enclosed it in their museum in a little glass house topped with a cross and adorned with the warning “Positively Do Not Open”.

But, like Robert, she still gets out sometimes for paranormal investigations or features on TV shows.

I’m telling you, some of these dolls travel more than I do. #jealous

Robert the Doll

Robert the Doll is another one that just looks weird. Even if he wasn’t supposedly haunted, it looks like bugs or something ate away at his face or something, leaving behind little holes that are surely a freaking nightmare for anyone with even mild trypophobia. This doll takes on a slightly different look than the others in a full on sailor outfit, and he even has a pet in the form of a stuffed dog that he holds. Which would almost be kind of cute if it weren’t for the fact that apparently Robert is actually very creepy.

His original owner was a little boy named Robert Otto who would claim the doll moved or broke things, but at the time, people just thought he was being a little boy with a big imagination. He kept the doll well into adulthood and kids who passed his house claimed they would see the doll moving in his upstairs window. After Otto passed away and new owners moved into the house, they claimed they would hear Robert the doll walking or running around upstairs and would also hear seemingly disembodied laughter and supposedly also saw the expression on his face change as if he were alive. Nowadays, Robert is said to have an adverse supernatural effect not just on humans, but on our precious electronics, too. It’s also been reported that Robert will target certain people with his haunting ways—anyone who dislikes him or talks shit about him in front of his face. Apparently, this straw-stuffed doll doesn’t deal well with disrespect and will teach you a lesson if you step to him.

Isla de las Muñecas

Let’s round out the list with not just one more creepy doll, but an entire island of creepy dolls.

I know, what the hell, right?

This is fantastic and I would totally go here.

Isla de las Muñecas translates to “Island of the Dolls” and exists on a little island located between the canals south of Mexico City, Mexico. And it is literally just an island. Full. Of. Dolls. They’re everywhere. They’re hanging in the trees. They’re laying around. They’re tacked to the walls of the few buildings there, such as the caretaker’s cabin. The whole island has just been taken over by dolls who hang there and rot in the weather and get weirder looking and creepier looking and have their battery-operated voice boxes turn into rotted, distorted, demonic sounding giggles.

Everything about this is awesome.

So what’s the story with the island? Well, the popular story features what every single haunted doll story seems to have—yep, a possession. Rumor has it the dolls are all possessed by the spirit of a young girl who drowned on the island. How she possesses every single one of the dolls, I don’t know, but that’s what people like to say.

Another version of the story—probably the truer version—says that the caretaker of the island, a man named Julian, was the one who found the body of the little girl, and then later he found her doll floating in the river. He took the doll and hung it from a tree in a weird, personal way to honor and remember the girl. But after finding her body, he believed that the little girl’s spirit was following him, so he kept hanging up more dolls to try to make her happy.

Now it’s just a thing that’s gotten totally out of control and draws a lot of people because hello it’s an entire island full of creepy dolls and it continues on and on because everyone who visits the island brings more dolls in a never ending cycle of spoopy. The whole effect is just added to by the type of trees that grow on the island and the way their branches and vines hang down, dried and dead and interspersed by little doll arms or severed heads.

A lot of people still claim that the island is creepy as hell and super haunted, with shows such as Ghost Adventures venturing out there to film episodes where they captured voices, creepy laughter from a doll with no batteries, and fires that seemed to start on their own. So, again…I would totally go here. Like, seriously, sign me up. Who’s going with me?

So what does everyone else think? What’s your favorite story of a haunted doll? Are dolls inherently creepy, or are we just making too much of it in our human brains? Would you visit the Island of the Dolls in Mexico? Let me know in the comments! As always, I’d love to hear from you. Thanks for joining me for another Spooky Saturday/Sunday post! <3

 

Sources:

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