home esoterica Original binnallofamerica.com Audio the United States of Esoterica merchandise contact

Lesley

Grey Matter

Lesley is also a columnist for UFO Magazine. Check it out !

9.22.9

Creepy Dolls

It is Fall in New Mexico, which happens to be when the majority of our festivities go on. I have been rather busy over the past week with entertainment, like Renaissance Fairs, State Fairs and so on. I didn’t actually think I would do a Grey Matters, but thanks to Facebook, something simple came to mind.

On Facebook there is an application called "Creepy Dolls," where you can send creepy doll gifts to your friends. I suppose that the Chucky movies should have given me a clue, but I never realized that other people also find dolls to be creepy. However, it now is obvious to me that a lot of people do.

When I was a little girl, I loved dolls. I always had the latest dolls, the ones that can pee, the ones that grew hair, the ones that cried and so on. I almost never found the new dolls to be creepy, but the old ones in grandma's cedar chest were always creepy to me. These days, I find most dolls kind of creepy, but certainly the older ones most of all.

Within esoterica there are many tales of haunted or possessed dolls and those are normally old dolls. I think the reason for this is probably more often human input than actual possession or whatever. Here is something that looks like a human baby, but it also looks old, forgotten and mistreated. We then probably attribute human like qualities to it, like it is vengeful because it was once new, loved and played with and it no longer is.

That is not to say that there may not be haunted or possessed dolls, but probably not as many as we think. There is just something so creepy about something that is made in the form of a human that has so obviously been neglected over the years.

Ooooh and the smile on certain dolls is just so creepy! Seriously, it sends chills up my spine. Right up there with clowns' painted-on smiles. No matter how forgotten and mistreated they have been, dolls always look happy. To see a forgotten doll, half her hair gone, her clothing ripped up, scuff marks all over, but still that happy little smile -- how could anyone find that to be anything other than creepy?

Often times I feel the same about stuffed animals, but not mine. I still have my favorite stuffed animal that I got when I was 3 or 4 years old. We happened to be at a Walgreens (or Payless, as I think they were called back then) and I saw this stuffed animal that I literally cried to bring home with me. He was a crazy looking thing, he had rainbow hair (like an afro), a blue body and a red jumpsuit. The lady that worked there said that nobody wanted him and gave him to me. I named him Cousin It (or nit, as I said it then).

I still have him right here at my computer in a sealed plastic bag. He is literally thread bare. Back about 15 years ago, I tried gluing some hair and eyes to him because they had worn off, it didn’t turn out very well, but he is still loved! So he is safe until I die, but then he will probably be automatically thrown away. Forgotten and unloved, just like those dolls.

  • Check out Lesley's Blog HERE

    As well as her Beyond the Dial blog