A peek inside the online haunted doll industry
Nancy is “always moving things around” and “making noises”. She’s an attention-seeker, apparently. She has messy blonde hair, big dark eyes and and Cupid’s bow lips. She’s also a doll. Or, according to Etsy seller Atlas, a spirit that’s taken up residence inside a doll. Oh, and if you’d like to splash out £80 on a lockdown buddy, act fast, because – believe it or not – Nancy is already in someone’s cart.
Arizona-based Atlas, 28, has been selling “haunted” dolls via her Etsy shop, KuiperAntiques, since last year. Her store is far from a one off. Another US-based seller, MySpiritDollBoutique, has made over 1300 sales since 2018. Doll prices there average out at around £60, with higher end (more haunted?) ones on offer for around £200. UK-based seller, DarkDolls13, set up shop last year, and has made over 400 sales (although they also sell crystals, candles, and other spiritual paraphernalia). There are too many similar shops to list, and a search for “haunted doll” brings up nearly 5000 items. And that’s just Etsy. The haunted doll industry extends to eBay, where a search returns page after page of glassy-eyed spirit vessels with ringlets.
These dolls aren’t custom-made. There are plenty of other online sellers, touting dolls specifically made to look creepy, and presumably used as Halloween decorations, or house décor for top hat-wearing Tim Burton obsessives. The dolls sold by Atlas and so many others are purported to be genuinely haunted. Some are vintage, some are relatively new, all are professed to contain anything from the spirits of dead children, to actual demons. There’s an affable earnestness to these sellers, who usually give detailed descriptions of the entities living in their dolls. “Meet little Sophie, she is only 5 years old and the cutest little bug,” seller MySpiritDollBoutique writes of one doll. “So this clown is NOT to be adopted by someone who has children, elderly or pets!!!!” is a disclaimer given to one of the store’s most nightmare-inducing items, “Clown of fear”.
So what would possess (ha) someone to spend actual money on something supposedly haunted? The majority of buyers and sellers appear to be women based in Europe and North America (particularly the US and UK). I asked a Malaysia-based Etsy user, Maria, who recently bought a doll from MySpiritDollBoutique, why she did so. “I have more than 1000 spirits in my collection,” she writes, via Etsy message, “I myself am a psychic medium born with the sight.” Maria, who bought a red-haired doll named Amelie, says she was attracted to her energy: “a kind and gentle spirit”, she writes. “We have a great relationship with each other,” Maria says of the “spirits” in her collection, “and at times I even see and talk to them as I see any other person alive.”
Sure, a lot of the dolls being sold by MySpiritDollBoutique and others are “good vibes only” kind of vessels. But what about the ones (I’m looking at you, “Clown of fear”) that come with a terrifying list of warnings? Who is buying these? Atlas, who I also contacted via Etsy, says it’s basically about “entertainment” value. “[negative spirits] tend to be more active than the friendly ones,” she writes (caveating that “spirits are not to be played with”). I suppose this makes sense. Some of us just live to have the shit scared out of us; it’s why we play with Ouija boards, or – as kids – play games like Bloody Mary. The temptation to poke the demonic hornets’ nest is so great, that some people will pay hundreds of pounds for it.
I ask Atlas to tell me about her creepiest doll-related experience. “Oh man,” she writes, “the most frightening thing that’s ever happened to me would have to be the night I brought one of my first vessels home.” Atlas had ordered this doll online, from Maryland. She thought it would be “good training” for her in dealing with “aggressive and or negative spirits”.
“I thought I was going crazy,” she says, “I got insanely sick to my stomach, ended up vomiting a few times, my ears were ringing, too.”
Atlas says that the power went out in a few of her lights, and she was unable to light a candle. After she moved the “vessel” to her garden shed, the activity eased off.
“Ever since I was young, I was very drawn to the paranormal/supernatural,” writes Atlas, “and I feel that I’ve always had the ability to feel the energy attached to items, and feel their stories.”
The haunted doll trope has been around for some time. In the European and American Witch Craze of the 16th and 17th centuries, crude dolls called “poppets” were said to be used by witches to cast spells on specific people. They’re still found in old houses, often lodged in chimneys. In Haiti and Louisiana, you have Voodoo dolls; similar versions of which can be found all over the world. Inanimate objects intended to represent people have an innate eeriness, and – from the Chucky franchise, to the 2014 hit Annabelle – the horror genre has gone nuts for it. Horror loves corrupted innocence, and nothing says this quite like a kids’ toy gone demonic.
Folklore and urban legends about haunted dolls can be found all over the world. In Japan, a doll is said to be possessed by the spirit of a young girl called Okiku Suzuki, who died in 1918. Priests at a temple in Hokkaido, where the doll is now kept, claim that they regularly have to cut its hair, because… it grows. In Mexico, there’s an entire island inhabited by over a thousand creepy-as-hell dolls. Slowly rotting, they hang by their limbs from trees, like the world’s scariest fruit. On La Isla de las Muñecas (Island of the Dolls), south of Mexico City, landowner Don Julian Santana Barrera began placing dolls around the area, in an attempt to ward off the spirit of a girl who had drowned nearby.
So there you have it, from folklore to horror blockbusters, to Etsy. Fear of dolls, by the way, is known as “pediophobia”. And, if you have it, well done for getting to the end of this article. Personally, it’s hard to believe that every single one (or even any) of these thousands of “haunted dolls” for sale online are genuinely haunted. The sense that I do get though, is that – in most cases – their buyers and sellers sincerely believe that they are.
I also know that – sceptical as I may be – I wouldn’t put one in my house if you paid me.
I have two Nancy dolls but one has a broken head and I think they switched body's.!