The Serpent Beneath It
“Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it.”
William Shakespeare said that.
I couldn’t find a more fitting quote to sum up the intentions of a would-be monster locked away inside a child’s toy.
But what are haunted dolls? You have heard the countless stories and you have seen the endless movies. But what really are they?
To put it simply, they are often vessels for malevolent spirits to manipulate the human environment: a Trojan horse if you will.
Psychopath in an innocent package with a dash of sociopath is how I tend to describe a haunted doll.
This phenomenon is nothing new, however. In fact, stories of haunted or possessed dolls date back to ancient Egypt, where they were actually constructed intentionally.
That’s right. They were actually built to be evil.
Most of the time they were used during war in the same fashion the more commonly known voodoo doll is used.
If they wanted somebody dead, like Ramses III, for instance, they made dolls that shared his likeness with the purpose of causing his death.
In theory, whatever harm you bring to the doll in turn occurs to the individual it represents.
Throughout history, African, Native American, and European cultures have used dolls for mystical purposes. Although in many cases they were used for religious rituals, they were more commonly used to bind evil spirits.
The idea was to trap the unwanted “ghost” in something that could easily be buried, burned, or removed from an area altogether.
As history has taught us, binding evil spirits voluntarily or involuntarily to dolls often brought forth a not so pleasant ending.
When have you ever heard of a happy-go-lucky haunted doll?
Since the beginning, something unfathomable has always been attached to the use of them.
Haunted objects are a staple to the field of paranormal research. The energy of a spirit, for one reason or another, can and will attach itself to anything of its choosing.
It could simply be because of admiration for a particular object or because the spirit simply can’t let go of that favorite teddy bear or rocking chair.
In those cases, the spiritual energy is benign.
But when it wants to be able to move, and when there is sinister intent involved, the spirit needs an inanimate object that can be animated.
Rosemary’s opening statement in her foreword raises many questions. She says, “Dolls are one of the most likely objects to become haunted.”
But why?
Dolls are the ultimate masquerade.
They are pretty, smiling, crying, talking replicas of babies and people in general. They walk, crawl, blink, and mechanically do anything a human being can. Some even wet themselves.
They are designed to be brought to life by a child’s imagination. We as human beings are the masters of puppets. However, in rare cases they are brought to life by something else. Dolls are innocent, and they are the last thing anybody would ever view as evil without interior manipulation.
Like the toy gun looking and sounding the part but bringing no harm, there are real ones. They are controlled by a hand with either good or bad intentions behind it. Nature breeds life and nature takes it away. Man builds things, and life comes back. But that life returns from a place we have yet to even begin to understand.
Many haunted dolls and the stories attached to them have become household names throughout the years. Their history and existence have been immortalized through literature and film.
Hollywood wasted no time capitalizing on this phenomenon to scare the pants off the horror movie aficionado.
Unfortunately, the glamorized exposure has placed the thought of possessed dolls in the realm of fiction. But in reality it is nothing to be nonchalant about or dismiss altogether.
It has been my job for decades to uncover the truth and separate the facts from the fabricated in the paranormal field. I assure you, my friends, the truth behind some of these stories does exist.
I watch the movies and I read the books, but for me it is simply for entertainment. Chucky cracks me up.
But is Chucky a product of Hollywood, or does he have origins rooted in truth?
Fact of the matter is, Chucky is loosely based on the stories of Robert the Doll.
Robert the Doll was acquired by author Robert Eugene Otto in 1906. It was given to him by a voodoo practicing Bahamian servant at that time.
Otto’s neighbors often reported seeing the doll move from window to window in his house.
His parents also claimed the doll would speak. While young Otto was playing and talking to the doll, his parents often heard a second speaker in a completely different voice responding to their child.
In many cases the voices overlapped, proving the young Otto wasn’t simply making Robert “pretend” talk in an altered voice.
The experiences with Robert still occur to this day. He currently resides at the East Martello Museum in Key West, Florida, where strange activity is often reported.
Robert found his mainstream fame in the 1988 horror film Child’s Play, as well as related sequels as a character named Chucky.
However, Robert isn’t the only one.
Thanks to the popular horror films The Conjuring, Annabelle, The Conjuring 2, and Annabelle: Creation, you have most likely heard of Annabelle.
Like Robert, Annabelle has her true story, and it is far from the on-screen adaptations.
This may surprise you, but she isn’t as horrific in appearance as the movies want you to believe.
In fact, Annabelle was nothing more than the infamous Raggedy Ann doll that was first created in 1915.
Annabelle’s real appearance.
Raggedy Ann saw many alterations and variations in her design throughout the years.
In 1970, a student nurse was given a more up-to-date version of the doll.
Shortly after receiving the gift, she and her roommate started to experience strange behavior from the doll.
She then contacted a psychic medium who deemed the toy haunted and possessed by the spirit of a young girl named Annabelle Higgins. The girl allegedly died on the property the doll originated from.
After considering what the medium told her, the nurse insisted on attempting to live with the possessed doll.
Eventually the activity began to escalate well beyond her comfort zone. Claims surfaced that the doll had the ability to bleed and the dexterity to write messages. The two roommates were shaken up.
The nurse sought out paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren for further assistance.
Ed concluded from his research that Annabelle was demonically possessed, and the Warrens convinced the doll’s owner to allow them to take it, and they did.
The Warrens have received an onslaught of scrutiny over the years. Many people are skeptical of their methods and claims, considering the majority of their stories only have Ed’s word to go by with nothing else to reference.
This includes Annabelle. There is nothing in print or historically documented to support the claims concerning the doll that wasn’t written by Ed himself.
Regardless, Annabelle became famous.
Following that, the Warrens profited greatly on Annabelle through literary work, lectures, and, of course, films.
Annabelle currently resides under lock and key at the Warrens’ Occult Museum in Monroe, Connecticut.
But what about the stories you don’t hear? What about the stories that haven’t been capitalized upon?
I think dolls are center stage due to their realistic features that cause the brain to relate human function to supernatural function.
They already look alive to begin with.
I have been collecting haunted objects for years. The items I have acquired range from dolls, to stuffed animals, to musical boxes, to bones, to even clothes and Ouija boards.
With the exception of Norman, I have never purchased a haunted item; they were always given to me. And even considering Norman, I did not know he was haunted at the time.
In cases where my clients felt it was a certain object leading to their haunting, they would often give it to me just to be rid of it.
Whether it would be my research proving it, or the owner’s own belief, many locations have gotten rid of their spiritual problems after simply handing off the object to me.
That’s how living your research becomes a blessing and a curse. I collect the objects for multiple reasons.
For starters, it helps my clients once again find peace and comfort in their home or business.
Secondly, it gives me the opportunity to research at will.
My collection consists of items from all over the world, all with a different story attached … and in some cases, something else.
When things at your house start to go bump in the night, it proves to be rather difficult to determine the origin when your home is already full of other people’s ghosts.
However, in most cases, the spiritual activity attached to what we brought into our home was and still is harmless.
It is nothing for us to hear a voice or find something out of place or witness a door opening and closing. We’ve become used to it. I guess you can’t expect to live the life we do as researchers and at the same time have the privilege of turning it off at will.
It must be accepted going into it. Your life will never be the same.
So with that, we take chances.
A few years ago, there was a stone that Christina collected from a case we were working on for the Mayor. That stone would appear at random, all through the house. We would find it in our cars, in the bathroom, on a shelf, or on the floor. Nothing evil ever derived from it, but this happened so many times it could not be ignored.
Another case involved a talking stuffed animal that somehow had the ability to curse at you. It was designed to speak, but only speak a certain number of pleasant phrases. But this thing just randomly cursed at you when you walked by. There was one night in particular when Christina woke me up claiming the toy had said my name at least three times.
All of those experiences were simple and passive. There was never a worry about an evil entity being attached.
We are blessed with the luxury of home field research.
I can’t even begin to say there is a way to remove a spirit from a certain place or from a particular object. I stop my involvement at observe and report.
I can say having removed items myself that the haunting ceased at each given location, but the spirit still remained in its vessel. The only difference was that vessel was now in my possession.
Today is very different for the field of paranormal research. We have equipment and knowledge that wasn’t available fifty years ago.
Now haunted dolls or allegedly haunted items can truly be studied. We can conduct tests to either validate or disprove what was once believed to be paranormal in origin; it’s no longer about choosing whether or not to believe a person’s story.
And now I had that incredible opportunity.
However, before we jump right into the home surveillance, my personal research, the physical encounters, the voices, the attacks, and the infestations, I need to start this retelling at the day we visited an antique shop located on the outskirts of Wallace, North Carolina.
That was the day we welcomed a new boy to the family.