VIDEO: Terrifying Doll Horror Stories

This video presents four absolutely terrifying stories about haunted dolls. Disclaimer – they might keep you up at night.

What do you think? Do you believe dolls can be haunted or evil?

Here is some background information on the subject that might help you form an opinion, provided by Wikipedia.

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The earliest report of a haunted doll goes back to Ancient Egypt where the enemies of Ramses III attempted to use wax images of his likeness to bring about his death. The dolls used in this ritual were said to be living and would curse anyone who bore their resemblance.

The ancient Egyptian poppet, effigy and voodoo dolls are often said to be cursed because of their long history of being used to place curses on other people and their association with the occult.

The earliest haunted dolls were poppets, effigies and voodoo objects which were created by early peoples for either religious or ceremonial purposes. These traditional objects were later acquired by various civilizations for mystical purposes or the occult.

In Rome dolls were used quite often in magical rituals to represent a connection to a god or goddess. Egyptian priests and magicians often used poppets for ceremonial purposes, to rid the body of evil or to place curses on those who went against the will of the Gods.

Annabelle

According to claims originating from Ed and Lorraine Warren, a student nurse was given the Raggedy Ann doll in 1970, but after the doll behaved strangely, a psychic medium told the student the doll was inhabited by the spirit of a dead girl named “Annabelle Higgins”.

Supposedly, the student nurse and her roommate first tried to accept and nurture the spirit-possessed doll, but eventually became frightened by the doll’s malicious behavior and contacted the Warrens, who removed the doll to their museum after pronouncing it “demonically possessed”.

Texas State University assistant professor of religious studies Joseph Laycock says most skeptics have dismissed the Warrens’ museum as “full of off-the-shelf Halloween junk, dolls and toys, books you could buy at any bookstore”.

Laycock calls the Annabelle legend an “interesting case study in the relationship between pop culture and paranormal folklore” and speculates that the demonic doll trope popularized by films such as Child’s Play, Dolly Dearest, and The Conjuring likely emerged from early legends surrounding Robert the Doll as well as a Twilight Zone episode entitled “Living Doll”.

Laycock suggests that “the idea of demonically-possessed dolls allows modern demonologists to find supernatural evil in the most banal and domestic of places.”

Commenting on publicity for the Warrens’ occult museum coinciding with the film release of The Conjuring, science writer Sharon A. Hill said that many of the myths and legends surrounding the Warrens have “seemingly been of their own doing” and that many people may have difficulty “separating the Warrens from their Hollywood portrayal”.

Hill criticized sensational press coverage of the Warrens’ occult museum and its Annabelle doll. She said, “Like real-life Ed Warren, real-life Annabelle is actually far less impressive.”