Why are people afraid of dolls? Is it their likeness to something real—their fake smiles and glassy, still eyes? Is it their lack of animation or the way they seem to watch you no matter where you move? For some of us, dolls are just downright creepy. But some dolls may actually possess something otherworldly behind those innocent stares. Something evil.
Why are people afraid of dolls?
When I was a child, my younger brother was so spooked by dolls. It seemed like it never failed that when we went on vacation and checked into a hotel, we’d flip the channels, and a Chucky movie would be on. It happened so often that it became a joke. Chucky was—possibly still is—my brother’s worst fear.
Dolls didn’t really spook me in the same way, but some are downright terrifying.
Pediophobia is the fear of dolls. Although most people don’t worry about having a Chucky-like experience when they’re in the presence of dolls, some people have an intense fear of them. It can be triggered by horror movies, pop culture, or even a traumatic event involving (even loosely) a doll. Some phobias can run in families. It may be genetic, or it could mean that fears are simply learned by watching their parents and other family members.
Pediophobia is considered a specific phobia, where the fear is of something that could never actually harm someone. Even though the fear of dolls is irrational, it’s not something an individual with the phobia can overcome.
This type of phobia is usually treated with exposure therapy or medication.
Because so much of pop culture, films, television, and stories involve dolls in the horror genre, we begin to associate the fear we experience while interacting with this entertainment in real life when we come into contact with a doll. We may sense that they’re watching us from across the room or wonder if they are moving in our peripheral vision.
Why are dolls creepy?
“This consistent pairing of dolls with other creepy, scary stimuli may lead to experiencing fear or nervousness when confronted with a doll or an image of a doll,” says psychologist Kate Wolitzky-Taylor, Ph.D., a faculty member in the department of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at UCLA.
A study done on the nature of creepiness showed that people found ambiguity—when something could have more than one interpretation—to be a trigger of fear. For example, when you see a doll in a horror movie like Chucky, it understandably triggers fear. However, even when you’re home and see a doll on the shelf, it may still seem unpredictable, maybe even suspicious, which makes it totally creepy.It comes down to a doll’s likeness to humans, but their lack of animation—they’re not quite human—that makes them eerie. Psychologist Frank McAndrew told Smithsonian Magazine that:
“They look like people but aren’t people, so we don’t know how to respond to it, just like we don’t know how to respond when we don’t know whether there is a danger or not… The world in which we evolved how we process information, there weren’t things like dolls.”
German philosopher Ernst Jentsch said in 1906:
“Among all the psychical uncertainties that can become a cause for the uncanny feeling to arise, there is one in particular that is able to develop a fairly regular, powerful and very general effect: namely, doubt as to whether an apparently living being really is animate and, conversely, doubt as to whether a lifeless object may not in fact be animate.”
Creepiness, McAndrew says, comes down to uncertainty. “You’re getting mixed messages. If something is frightening, you scream, you run away. If something is disgusting, you know how to act,” he explains. “But if something is creepy… it might be dangerous but you’re not sure it is… there’s an ambivalence.” If someone is acting outside of accepted social norms – standing too close, or staring, say – we become suspicious of their intentions. But in the absence of real evidence of a threat, we wait and in the meantime, call them creepy. The upshot, McAndrew says, is that being in a state of “creeped out” makes you “hyper-vigilant”. “It really focuses your attention and helps you process any relevant information to help you decide whether there is something to be afraid of or not. I really think creepiness is where we respond in situations where we don’t have enough information to respond, but we have enough to put us on our guard.” (Source)
It wasn’t until the 18th and 19th centuries that dolls were real enough to make them seem creepy. Only when they began to look too much like a human that we begin to cast them in a suspicious category. The more natural they look, the more uneasy it makes many of us. And age that doll a hundred years, and it takes on a whole new level of creep—bordering fear.
The Most Famous Haunted Dolls
1. Annabelle
Most of us are familiar with Annabelle, the doll that inspired the horror movie from the Conjuring Universe. According to Ed and Lorraine Warren, the Raggedy Ann doll was given to a nursing student named Donna by her mother in 1971. Donna claimed that the doll behaved strangely. The doll would be found in places that it wasn’t left and would somehow appear right outside the door immediately after being placed in a different room. A close friend, Lou, grew suspicious of the doll and eventually believed it to be possessed by something evil. Donna and her roommate Angie took a while to think something was off about the doll.
Something to note is that the doll was purchased secondhand by Donna’s mother at a hobby store.
Soon the girls began to uncover notes that were left around their apartment. The notes were always written on parchment paper—something they had never used before and didn’t have in the apartment. The notes often read: “Help Lou” and “Help us.”
One day, Donna came home from work to find that the doll—Annabelle—had blood on her hands. It seemed like the blood was originating from the doll itself. Desperate for answers, the girls called in a medium. The first medium told them that the land on which their apartment was built had a spirit of a young girl, around seven years old, who’d been found dead there many years before. The little girl had taken up residence in the doll. After hearing this, the girls decided to keep the doll and treat it well since they felt sorry for the tragic end of the young girl whose spirit still remained.
A friend of the girls’ put them in contact with the Warrens. You see, Annabelle behaved worst around Lou. Maybe he reminded her of someone horrible in her life, perhaps she didn’t like men, or maybe she sensed that Lou could see her for what she truly was—evil. Who can say, but one day Angie and Lou were hanging out in the apartment when Donna wasn’t home. They heard movement in Donna’s room, and Lou went to investigate. Annabelle usually sat on Donna’s bed, but this time, she had moved to the chair. He moved toward the doll, and a horrible feeling rushed through him. He felt a burning pain on his chest and realized he had several claw marks scratched into his skin. The marks healed mysteriously fast, and within a few days, they were gone entirely. That’s when the Warrens were called, along with a priest.
It was believed that the doll’s goal was to possess Donna’s soul. They believed that Annabelle was a demonic entity that had attached itself to the doll.
The Warrens made a distinction that demons do not possess items or things; they attach themselves to them. The priest performed an exorcism on the apartment, and the warrens took Annabel with them. The warrens were worried that Annabel’s demonic entity would wreak havoc on them, possibly even harm them. So on their way home, they took back roads, fearful that she would cause an accident. The Warrens suffered from car trouble the entire way home. Their power steering failed, their brakes failed, and the engine in the car kept stalling. Trying to remedy this, Ed Warren sprinkled holy water on Annabel. That helped for a short time—enough to get them home.
At first, Ed just put the doll on his desk, but soon, she began acting out. She was levitating on several occasions she started moving around the house. The warrens called a priest after this, but their concerns weren’t taken seriously. It was a doll, after all. But the priest was in a car accident on the way home. He was badly hurt, but he did survive.
The Warrens placed Annabelle inside a locked glass case, with a note that reads: do not touch.
2. Robert the Doll
Annabelle isn’t the only famous haunted doll. The story of Robert the doll takes us back to the early 1900s and a boy named Eugene Robert Otto. Eugene was given a one-of-a-kind, handmade doll by a servant who worked for his parents in their home. Eugene, commonly called Gene, named the doll Robert after himself and became attached to his new toy.
Gene’s home, which is called the Artist’s House is located at 534 Eaton Street in Key West. The house was built between 1890 in 1898.
At first, Robert seemed like an ordinary doll. But it wasn’t long before some strange event started happening. When Gene was ten years old, he woke in the middle of the night to see Robert staring at him at the end of his bed. Gene cried for help when moments later, the furniture was overturned in his room. He begged his mom to rescue him. When she finally got into the room, she saw Gene curled up on his bed, trembling, and Robert, the doll sat at the foot of it. And the room was in complete shambles. Gene told his mother that Robert had done it.
Dreams parents would often hear the boy talking to the door and getting a response back in a totally different voice. His parents even reported hearing him speak and witnessing his expression change. People claim to see Roberts laugh and run up the stairs., And even saw him peeking out of the windows. Despite all of this strangeness, Gene kept Robert throughout his entire life, and after Gene’s parents died, he moved back into their home with his wife and. Gene Eventually, Robert was put into a room of his own upstairs that had a window that faced the street.
Even though Gene was comfortable with Robert’s presents, his wife didn’t seem to be. She convinced Gene to lock the door in the attic to give her peace of mind. But this didn’t make the doll very happy. Loud pacing, banging, and evil cackling could be heard from the attic. Neighborhood children saw him through the windows, mocking them as they walked to school. But there was no way he could’ve been in the window because he was supposedly locked in the attic. Could there be? When Gene went to investigate, he saw that Robert was, in fact, sitting in the rocking chair by the window in the upstairs bedroom. Gene then locked Robert back up in the attic, and this repeated many times.
3. Ruby
One haunted doll you may not be as familiar with is Ruby. She was passed down from generation to generation within a family, going from attics to basements for many years. Her appearance was too creepy for her owners to put her on display, but that didn’t keep her from moving around wherever she pleased.
Supposedly, when people touch Ruby, they feel an intense sadness. More sensitive observers even experience nausea. She originally belonged to the family’s ancestor, a young girl who died with the doll in her arms. The family believes it’s the spirit of the girl that haunts the doll.
The family eventually donated Ruby to a museum, where hundreds of visitors have held her and claimed to feel her sadness.
If you enjoy creepy tales like this one, check out The Ghost that Emails His Friends and Family.
4. Letta
I’ve saved the most bizarre doll for last. Letta, which is short for Letta Me Out, is a haunted doll in Australia. The doll was found underneath a reportedly haunted house 45 years ago. When Letta is around, things move. Witnesses have reported that they’ve witnessed him moving in front of them.
“I reckon he walks in the nighttime: We came in here, as a new house, and I’ve never heard so many strange things in my life,” Mr. Walton, the man who discovered him, said.
What makes Letta so strange is that the doll is believed to be around 200 years old and has human hair. People who’ve come in contact with Letta have experienced nightmares and awful feelings. Dogs have attacked the doll and relentlessly bark.
Letta doesn’t look like your average doll. He’s wooden and has a grotesque appearance, with a large hook nose, cinched brows, and an eerie grin.
He’s certainly not a doll I’d like to come in contact with.
Whether you believe that dolls can be haunted or not, I think there are few of us who haven’t at least side-glanced a doll at some point in our lives. When something sits across from you with a painted smile and eyes that bore into you, it’s hard not to find them at least a little creepy when you think about it.
My grandmother collected dolls for many, many years. She has too many to count. Not too long ago, I went into one of her storage rooms and saw a heaping pile of them. And I’ve got to say, if you weren’t afraid of dolls before then, that would do it. Dozens of sets of eyes stared back at me. I’ve shared these images on this post.
After studying this, along with that experience, I don’t know if I’ll ever look at a doll the same way again.
Music:
- The following music was used for this media project:
Music: Aftermath by Kevin MacLeod
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/3342-aftermath
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
- The following music was used for this media project:
Music: Vanes by Kevin MacLeod
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/4577-vanes
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
- Ghostpocalypse – 6 Crossing the Threshold by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
