Demon Doll
LIKE MOST OF US, the Jones family equated the word “haunting” with a scary building—a place in which the unexplainable occurred. Lights flickered. Furniture moved. Eerie noises were heard.
They didn’t know that hauntings also took another form. Ghosts weren’t always confined to homes, barns or hillsides. Instead, they sometimes attached themselves to objects (or “totems”). These spirits were free to roam wherever their totems went: a car, a store, an office. And sadly—as Kate and Emily Jones discovered—there was just one way to get rid of such specters.
It was Christmas in Mora, 1997, and the Jones girls knew what they wanted: a My Height Fashion Doll. Every trip to the local store inevitably ended with their mom, Angie, being dragged to the toy aisle, so she could see yet again this most coveted of gifts.
“Please,” the girls would beg.
“We’ll see,” Angie always countered.
The doll was expensive—too expensive, in fact. But a few months earlier, Angie had hit the jackpot, or so she thought. She’d come across a used My Height Fashion Doll at a garage sale, and she had purchased it in a “grab bag” (one that also included tattered, ragged children’s clothes). Now, the doll was safely hidden inside her bedroom closet.
That magical Christmas Day finally arrived, and Kate and Emily devoured their presents like a pack of hungry wolves. When Angie unveiled the My Height Fashion Doll for the grand finale, Kate and Emily erupted with glee.
Unfortunately, their joy didn’t last.
Over the course of the next several days, the girls began finding the toy in unusual places—spots they were certain they hadn’t left it. Somehow, the toy wound up in their parents’ bed, in the bathroom, beneath the dining room table and even in their mom’s car.
On New Year’s Eve, Kate and Emily brought the doll to their cousin Amanda’s house. They told her all about the possessed toy, and the trio decided to conduct an experiment. Before they went to bed, the girls sat the doll on a chair in Amanda’s room. Each promised not to touch it, and then—one by one—they fell asleep.
Kate and Emily awakened the next morning to the sound of Amanda’s scream. The girls bolted upright in their sleeping bags. Then they screamed too.
The doll was still sitting in the chair, but its head was turned backward.
The girls’ parents burst into the room, but after the children frantically explained, most of the adults didn’t believe them. They scratched their heads, shrugged their shoulders and said things like, “Those kids and their imaginations,” and, “How do they come up with it?”
Angie, however, wasn’t convinced that her children were telling a tall tale. Later that day, when her family arrived back at their Mora home, Angie sat down with Kate and Emily for a serious talk.
“I want you to tell me the truth,” said Angie. “Did one of you do that to the doll?”
“No,” the girls proclaimed.
“Do you promise you didn’t?” Angie asked.
“I promise,” each of them replied.
“Then let’s try one more experiment,” said Angie.
They put the doll in Angie’s bedroom closet, and each agreed to leave it there for a week—just to see if anything strange might happen.
They didn’t wait long.
The next morning, Kate awakened to the scare of her life. The My Height Fashion Doll wasn’t in her mom’s closet anymore; it was in bed with her!
This final ghostly encounter left the Joneses with a decision to make; it proved to be a surprisingly difficult one. Despite the scares the doll had caused, the girls were reluctant to give up this most precious of Christmas gifts. Angie, too, did not want to discard such a memorable present. But in the end, the family chose to remove the toy—and its spirit—from their home. They broke off the doll’s head, arms and legs, and they threw the toy out with the rest of their trash.
January 2, 1998, marked the final day in which the Jones family experienced a paranormal encounter. It would seem that, in getting rid of the toy, they also expelled the ghost. If only all hauntings could be ended so easily.