From Innocent Toys to Nightmare Fuel: The Evolution of Creepy Dolls | Monstrum
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 ต.ค. 2023
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Maybe it’s the unblinking eyes, staring at you, emotionless, day and night. Or, perhaps it’s their small size acting as a cloak of innocence. Or their human-like appearance that makes them seem just slightly too real. However, you want to spin it-there’s something creepy about dolls.
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Written and Hosted by: Dr. Emily Zarka
Director: David Schulte
Executive Producer: Amanda Fox
Executive Producer: Dr. Emily Zarka
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Bibliography
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "doll". Encyclopedia Britannica, 27 Feb. 2019, www.britannica.com/topic/doll.
Childhood by Design: Toys and the Material Culture of Childhood, 1700-Present, edited by Megan Brandow-Faller, Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2018.
Collodi, Carlo. The Adventures of Pinocchio. Project Gutenberg.
Geczy, Adam. The Artificial Body in Fashion and Art : Marionettes, Models and Mannequins, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2016.
Kupferman, David W. “Toy Gory, or the Ontology of Chucky: Childhood and Killer Dolls.” Childhood, Science Fiction, and Pedagogy : Children Ex Machina, edited by David W. Kupferman, and Andrew Gibbons, Springer Singapore Pte. Limited, 2019, pp. 57-78.
Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Sourcebook, edited by Daniel Ogden, Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2002.
Mee, Laura. “Conjuring a Universe: James Wan, Creepy Dolls and Demon Nuns.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video, vol. 40, no. 2, 2023, pp. 215-233.
Mitchell, Donna. “Monstrous Femininity and Objectified Masculinity in Daphne du Maurier’s ‘The Doll.’” The Female Fantastic: Gendering the Supernatural in the 1890s and 1920s, Eds. Lizzie Harris McCormick, Jennifer Mitchell, and Rebecca Soares. Taylor & Francis, 2019, pp. 22-33.
Reading Richard Matheson: A Critical Survey, edited by Cheyenne Mathews, and Janet V. Haedicke, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Incorporated, 2014.
Reading Richard Matheson: A Critical Survey, edited by Cheyenne Mathews, and Janet V. Haedicke, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Incorporated, 2014.
Speaking of Monsters: A Teratological Anthology. Eds. Caroline Joan S. Picart, and John Edgar Browning. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Thornberry, Neal. “Thomas Edison’s Dirty Little Secret - A "Bride of Chucky’ Doll.” Industry Week, 2014.
Wright, Andy. “The Story Behind the World’s Most Terrifying Haunted Doll.” Atlas Obscura, Oct. 25, 2021. www.atlasobscura.com/articles....
I really do hope that Voodoo Dolls get their own Monstrum episode. More people need to know the truth about them, not the lies told from the perspective of a demonizing looking glass.
Agree!
You can't handle the truth
“Voodoo dolls” are Hollywood bs. They aren’t used in real voodoo, which belongs to my culture.
@@LuisSierra42 Baaaaaabbbyyyyy- I'm from new orleans, you are Not about the tell Me something I don't already know about Voodoun! My Grandmama Is an Eshu Disciple!! The truth is out there, and they Do deserve their own monstrum EP!
Where can I find out more?
That doll showing up in different places in the room behind Emily is such a nice touch! You guys had fun with this one, and I love it.
We were EXTREMELY dedicated to her background shenanigans.-*Dr.Z*
@@pbsstoried Your passion was tangible 😹
This just shows the dedication and effort that was put in the series
I was 2/3s of the way through the video before I saw it on the mantel and had to click back through the video to see if it had been moving. So fun!
I'm surprised that the Japanese traditions around treating dolls with kindness isn't mentioned. But, given that it's more of a possession thing, it might be worth its own episode.
As a creator of horror dolls, I really enjoy seeing the history. I’m tempted to link this video as reference when I’m asked “why do you make these?!”
Do it!-*Dr.Z*
My elder child loves the old dolls -- porcelain are good, but also the old and scarred ones. They don't creep me out, but her fascination with them kind of does.
I think my favorite haunted doll story is that of Oiku in Japan, mainly because of how much the doll is misunderstood in my eyes. From Wikipedia: According to modern Japanese folklore, in 1918, a teenager named Eikichi Suzuki purchased a large doll from Hokkaido for his younger sister, Okiku, who gave the doll her name. When Okiku died, her family came to believe that Okiku's spirit was inhabiting the doll and the hair on the doll was growing. The doll resides in Mannenji Temple in Hokkaido, where it is claimed that a priest regularly trims Okiku's still-growing hair. There's no evidence of Okiku being malicious in any way, so she's more 'sad' than 'scary' in my eyes. I want to visit her one day so I can leave her some candy as an offering.
How about the doll village in Japan?
@@pakde8002 Maybe
That is an interesting perspective. My discovery of Oiku was during my binge on Japanese urban legends and horror. Unfortunately, my curiosity was a double-edged sword, and the sight of the doll left me in many sleepless nights. It is safe to say that the Story of Oiku isn't one of malevolence, but the doll's appearance and growing hair does produce an unsettling sight.
I think Oiku seems more sad than scary, too. I don't think she even looks scary, frankly (also, I'm seeing two different dolls being called the Oiku doll in different places, but neither looks scary to me).
When I was a kid my dad would help out the old people in our neighborhood with home repairs and my sister and I would tag along. One day an old woman said “Do you girls want a treat? Follow me” expecting delicious baked goods my sister and I followed. She lead is through the kitchen and down the stairs, the basement was lined floor to ceiling with shelves. The shelves were full of hundreds of porcelain dolls.
My sister and have been terrified of dolls ever since.
😅
I actually own Samantha (the American Girl doll that’s moving around in the background). She’s at my parents’ house right now and the scariest thing about her is that she needs to take a trip to the AG Doll hospital for a long overdue check up, lol :p I absolutely adore her though
Just be careful if you take her there! My wife owns a few Pleasant Company era AG dolls and won't take them to the doll hospital. Apparently, if they need to be rewigged or need new eyes or anything, the hospital often replaces the head, and you lose that cool Pleasant Company logo on the neck. There are a lot of helpful AG doll restoration TH-cam videos by collectors!
@@juliospeaksHuh, I’ll have to take a closer look at her neck then (I got her as a Christmas gift when I was 8, so it’s been a while) and she was in fairly good condition, I just want to be sure that she’s in good enough condition to last for a long time.
Tiny lifeless eyes of dolls are creepy asf.
The actress Candice Bergen ("Murphy Brown") was born on May 9, 1946, in California. Her father, Edgar Bergen, was a well-known ventriloquist, comedian, and actor. He gave the puppet a bigger room in his home than his own daughter. So many messed up things went on and the mother didn't do anything to stop it. The worst might be that when he died, he left nothing to his daughter in his Will, but his will gave $10,000 in 1978 (worth $47,800 today) for the doll to be taken care of after his death.
I imagine that's why she became a successful comedic actor. Processing all that trauma. Loved her in Murphy Brown.
@@iananelson8256- She's also done dramatic roles.
that’s so fucked up!!!
When your dad favored his dummies over you.
the crasist thing to me about this isnt the doll But the idea that children wernt conaiderd children bug just small adults....
You mentioned the classic 'Twilight Zone' seasone five episode, 'Living Doll' as an example of, well, the 'living doll' horror trope.
But near the end of season three, there was 'The Dummy,' following the mystery of a ventriloquist's dummy as 'is it alive, or all in the ventriloquist's head'? And, in true 'Twilight Zone' fashion, gives the audience one of the best twist endings in dramatic history.
Not to mention the 2nd TZ episode "Caesar and Me" & "The Glass Eye" from "Alfred Hitchcock Presents".
As a doll and figurine collector who has a possibly haunted doll, I absolutely love this episode of Monstrum. Great job, Dr. Zarka.
I also have collections of haunted dolls and other objects!
A doll who is also a figurine collector? 😋
I would like all these chapters to be in the future seasons of Monstrum.
*Sea Serpents
*Leviathan
*The Headless Horseman ✅
*Phantom Vehicles
*Boogeyman
*Ghosts
*Possessed Dolls ✅
*Shadow People
*Undead
*Goblins
*Bigfoot ✅
*Man-Eating Plants ✅
*Creepy Clowns
*Killer Robots
*Swamp Monsters
*The Mummy ✅️
*Living Scarecrows
*The Invisible Man
*Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde
*Merfolk
*Demons
*Skeletons
*Stingy Jack (Jack of The Lantern)
*Gnomes
*Sea Monsters that attacked Submarines
*Alien Abductions ✅
*Ogres
*Ghouls
*Lich
*Cyborgs ✅
*Witches
*Kaiju
*Cthulhu ✅
*The Rake
*Revenants
*Vampires
*Dagon
*Ogopogo
*Colossal Claude
*Spectral Carriages
*Kappa
*Flatwoods Monster
*The Flying Dutchman
*El Charro Negro
*La Santa Compaña
*Davy Jones & the Undead Pirates
*Mutants
*Beast People of Dr. Moreau
*The Picture of Dorian Gray
*Haunted Houses
*Jiangshi
*Ahuizotl
*Gremlins
You could've also mentioned "Small Soldiers", a movie from 1998, where alien dolls and soldier action figures come to life and attack their owners. There's a scene where they bring Barbies to life and they attack Kirsten Dunst's character and is arguably the scariest scene in the kid's movie. Great cast and great fun.
Or you could've mentioned any of the many "Puppet Master" horror movies.
The movie is inspired by the short story "Battleground" by writer Stephen King published in King's 1978 collection Night Shift.
I’d like to propose that one of the greatest doll moments in horror history is in The Exorcist when Regan’s head turns around in the style of a doll, doing the opposite of the Uncanny Valley, doll taking on human attributes trope, thus becoming one of the greatest moments in horror history.
The doll's changing position throughout was a clear indicator that it would be more than just a prop. Nice touch.
I loved watching the Doll gradually move around in the background.
I think people universally find things that blur the line between an object and human deeply unsettling. Whether it looks lifeless or taps into a fear of dopplegangers, there may not be any one answer. The fear of dolls may be similar to the fear of mirrors or mannequins. It's us but not us and it's also a fear of being replaced. Or maybe we're the one that's a 'copy/fake' and don't realize it. This fear seems well covered in the movie 'Us' that features dopplegangers instead of inanimate objects that are secretly alive. I hadn't considered the angle of dolls representing evil adults that violate the safety of a child's room in some way.
The fear of dolls is one I don't share with the seeming majority of people who do but I can see why they're scared of them. Same for clowns. I adore clowns and dolls/human-like toys, even after watching It & Child's Play as a kid. My sister not so much, I found my favorite doll with blinking eyes in the garbage outside one morning not long after we saw Child's Play. I brought it back in obviously.
What you said is quite interesting. I don’t fear dolls but I don’t like clowns. And I am very scared of mirrors in the dark
I find the psychology behind uncanny valley interesting 🤔
Great video. It seems the scary part of dolls is how blank they are, taking on traits that we give to them. We often see children the same way and try to do this to them, assigning traits and personalities we want them to have. But children don't often adhere to these assignments, which create a lot of tension. Gay, autistic, or other traits that parents wouldn't have chosen for their kids wind up being suppressed, and often the parent can see resentment or some other form of hostility from their child. That may have ties to the creepy doll phenomena, but I'm just spit-balling here. Again, great video, a wonderful addition to the season. Happy Halloween!
This begs the question, do children naturally play 'make believe' or are they taught it? If the latter, is this a normal part of childhood? Afterall, many atheists see spiritual people living in a world of make-believe. On I knew likened belief in God ad Santa Claus for adults.
God, I hated dolls as a kid. Especially the ones with eyes that looked way to real. My older sister had a bunch American Girl dolls and I wouldn't go near or touch them with 10 foot pole. I was that terrified of them.
My mother hates porcelain dolls because growing up in the 60s her stepmother had shelves of them and there was hell to pay if they were touched or played with, her stepmom probably cared more for her dolls than for my mom- I think that's also part of the fear, some people grew up with dolls being the thing that you're not allowed to touch, or worse you're punished by an adult for doing so.
To this day I am more afraid of killer dolls than I am of slashers, killer robots or aliens. Chucky was one of the first horror movies I ever watched and I watched it young and that fear has stuck with me to this day. I watch those movies and even the show for fun, but I still keep an eye and ear open for any toy scuttling about.
Oh. This'll make tonight fun, when I head to my bedroom... where my wife keeps her vintage doll collection.
The only way it can be more fun is if she keeps that vintage doll collection in a well-lit glass display case facing the bed.
Oh damn you too ? 😢😅
@@Nmethyltransferase Naw... just a shelf about three feet from the ceiling, completely surrounding the room... in varying degrees of moonlight. Not sure of the number, but s'gotta be about 80.
@@tauntingeveryone7208 it was smaller then.. and less menacing!
@@natoman123 I feel ya, brother!
I'm almost had a heart attack with the doll... damn dr. Z...
There was a period in which my brother and I would put a cabbage patch doll and Teddy Ruxpin in the hallway before bed. The doll creeped us out when the moonlight hit it and sometimes Teddy Ruxpin would randomly start talking by itself (luckily he lived at grandmas house).
There was an episode of Night Gallery featuring a doll. It was set in England and dealt with a retired military fellow and a doll possessed by Kali that one of his enemies from India sent to his granddaughter. I was about six or seven when I saw it, so yeah, spooky.
Loved this episode, although there were bits where I was expecting more information (Did the voice box dolls cause financial ruin? What were the final words from Tina?)
Also THANK YOU for the part about Toy Story being traumatic for kids. NOT entirely because of the scene with Sid, but rather the entire concept of toys having feelings.
Was I watching the doll on the shelf the entire time? Yes. Yes I was. She was giving major "Dolly Dearest" vibes and that movie messed me up!
The final words from Tina (IIRC) are spoken to the mother. The doll says, "My name is Talking Tina, and you'd better be nice to me."
Incidentally, Tina kills the stepfather by causing him to trip over her and fall. down a flight of stairs. The episode is structured so that everyone else just thinks the stepfather is losing it, imagining that the doll is alive and malevolent.
My aunt loved tigers and had many tiger plushies of many sizes in her home. One in particular used to freak me out when I was very young because it had very realistic looking eyes and I was certain that it would attack me if I was alone in the room.
💯 cool idea for an episode of Goosebumps there 👹
The movie trope of giving the creepiest doll ever made as a gift to little children is so bizarre. This was really fun! Thank you!
I saw the "Living Doll" Twilight Zone episode when I was way too young. My grandmother collected dolls, and I was terrified of them for way too long.
I loved the Samantha doll moving around! Though whoever left her face down on the chair at one point immediately made me worry about her! What you said about Toy Story making you more aware of how you treated your toys is so true! I was always very mindful of how I treated my toys because of this, especially my dolls, which I think partly led to my inability to give any of them up and now I have 20+ american girl dolls I've collected all displayed in my room. Some people are creeped out by them but they make me feel safe. We assign our feelings and fears to them. ❤️
I was cackling at the American Girl doll at the end. Absolutely perfect. 🤣
She tracked across the set…-*Dr.Z*
Interesting stuff thanks. I wrote the first adaptation of Slappy for the goosebumps kids series so it’s nice to see that represented here.
There was another twilight zone with Cliff Robertson as a ventriloquist who swapped places with his dummy. Also, they did a really scary Night Gallery episode about a cursed Victorian doll sent from India has revenge against a British colonel
Don't think I didn't notice the Samantha doll moving across the room in the background.
Also don't forget Resident Evil 8 and its dollmaker Donna Beneviento and her alter ego, a bride doll name Angie. ("FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!!!") made all the worse by Donna's ability to make Ethan hallucinate. There's a story told in pictures not only about Donna's tragic past but its also implied that Ethan and his wife Mia considered having an abortion of the very daughter Ethan is fighting through the game to save out of a fear she would be malformed from their exposure to a mold bioweapon in the previous game. Donna's hallucinations are so real that if one of them catches Ethan, he dies from fright.
I mean, Pinocchio himself is such a good subject for a Monstrum video about childhood innocence, morality, trauma, and humanity
I collect Living Dead Dolls and i love my collection so freaking much. As an adult i still keep up this collection, got a "haunted" babydoll for Christmas last year. To me, they're comforting.
Ooh I love living dead dolls! I hope to collect them one day.
Everytime I think i have a list of classic and old spooky flicks, another pops up. Someone needs to make a definitive one.
I remember being creeper out by that Trilogy of Terror
Love the background action :D
Growing up I LOVED Goosebumps. I loved the monsters and the spooky stories, but they never really scared me.
Except for one.
Slappy TERRIFIED me. And I'm sure it must have given me nightmares at some point.
Dolls are creepy man
I love how the doll in the background on the chair keeps moving from shot to shot!
Nice touch with the doll appearing in the frame at the last part. My heart jumped for a fraction of a second.
I forget what show it was, but it might have been a segment on a Secrets of the Museum show they often show on the Travel Channel. It was about Thomas Edison's talking doll, which had a voice, but the way it sounded was on the creepy side. The irony as they pointed out whoever did the voice on the doll was probably the world's first recording artist.
I'm still a little unhappy that my parents let me watch Poltergeist as a child. It's still the scariest movie I've seen. Then again, my parents let me watch Robocop, too, thinking that it was a robot movie. No, they didn't watch the movie with me.
The exorcist movie when it first came out. Just 7th grade so my dad bought the ticket and left. That was messed up.
To this day I have not watched either movie
The 80’s was the worst for children. lol
@@zippersocksMore like the best!
That Poltergeist was rated PG baffles me. I’ve read that Gremlins (also rated PG) was partly responsible for the category, PG-13, being developed. Poltergeist was way more intense than Gremlins, although I suspect that the latter movie’s marketing toward younger audiences led to the backlash.
I don't think dolls ever creeped me out much as a kid. I vaguely remember having a toy clown that I was petrified of as a toddler, but normal dolls never bothered me. My grandma had a large collection of high end baby dolls in her living room that I was fine with, and it was the door to the attic (always open of course) and the evil grandfather clock that scared me. The clock would always chime (loudly and intimidatingly) when I walked past it and was alone in the room. So I never walked past it. I ran.
I should also mention that your narration and the overall quality of these videos has ramped up lately. Keep up the good work!
I love dolls. I absolutely adore them. My brother, on the other hand, despises them and hates seeing them. I don't know why but I think my love for dolls is mostly because I view them as companions in my otherwise mundane and quiet life.
One of my few goals in life is to have a room filled with shelves and dolls... and maybe have it act as the guest room of the house.
I collect Himstedt dolls, Philip Heath dolls and have some by other artists. They are everywhere except the bathroom in my house. But I think of my house as more of 'It's a Small World' rather than The Haunted Mansion. Oh, and I collect Living Dead Dolls as well.
A video about scary dolls... and not even a single mention of Anna Belle? I am rather surprised and shocked. She is perhaps THE most eponymous "creepy doll" in modern culture, perhaps only challenged (or beaten) by Chucky.
She was mentioned in the “The Conjuring universe “ bit at the end
There's a lot of creepy dolls. She's only one of the most recent ones, and was mentioned near the end. She doesn't stand out enough to warrant her own sequence, in context of this video.
@@DIRTY-MERLIN A series of several movies of which a commercialised version of the real story is told. I'm referring to the actual Anna Belle doll, and the actual story.
She also wasn't mentioned by name, which was my point.
@@GryphonBrokewing The story of Anna Belle is from the 1970's, and one of Ed and Lorraine Warrens' more famous cases. I am not talking about the Conjuring movies, which doesn't really do her justice, but about the real story. It is by no means recent.
@@1Kapuchu100 This video covers the history of dolls, why we created them and where the phobias about them come from. It is quite recent in that perspective.
On a similar tack, the last decade saw the introduction of mascot horror. It too takes familiar childhood norms and makes them scary.
Shoutout to Samantha holding it down in the background.
Yay! You noticed.
@@pbsstoried Samantha is the woman I aspire to be. 🤣
I loved this! Monstrum is so fun, thank you for all of this.
My wife had an old co-worker in her 50s who had quite the collection. One of her dolls she treated like her teenage daughter of sorts. Whenever she found the doll in an odd location, she'd laugh it up and "scold her." She'd dress her up in different outfits, including similar clothes she wore. Creepy.
Child's Play 2019 and M3gan also combines dolls with our new fear of AI. Dolls that think and feel became even more real ever since Furby.
Another excellent video and, coincidentally, hits upon the theme of this year's Nightmare haunted house in NYC. Each year they choose a different theme, and this year it's Dollhouse. This video really gets one in the mood to attend the event. Thanks!
I appreciate the wandering doll in the background.
I love these insightful breakdowns of popular iconic monsters! Dr Zarka is so rad!
i got goosebumps with that moving doll at the end!!!!!!! 😰
How fitting you'd use Samantha from AG as the doll moving the background, as she's from the Victorian Era in America.
Ngl just like with clowns, evil dolls are one of the things that Im tierd of seeing being showen as evil and creepy., but atleast its history on how it became creepy is pretty intreasting.
Never been bothered by either and I would like to see something other than dolls and clowns too.
The popularity of elf on the shelf in the past decade seems to have shed a positive light on the whole idea that dolls can move around on their own.
One of the few horror movie things I can't handle is creepy dolls. I used to panic about my stuffed animals falling off my bed at night because I didn't want them to get sick of it and take revenge... Childhood is wild
Your Samantha doll startled me when she appeared in the front 😂😂😂
The whole concept of the coming to life of something that was never alive to begin with is terrifying to me. The Small Soldiers film is one that comes to mind.
I think its really charming how many adult knickknacks have transitioned so fully into children's toys and then back into adult collections.
One story that never fails to give me goosebumps was written down by Robert Ballard: When they went down to the wreck of the Titanic for the first time, they didn't know what they were going to find and half expected some sort of human remains, i.e. skeletons. But when a perfectly intact child's face cheerfully smiled back at him he was quite spooked until he realized it was a porcelain doll's head.
Myself was traveling for work a while ago and spent a couple of nights at an accommodation booked by my employer. It was hideously decorated with taxidermy-animals, kitschy religious art and - you guessed - some old dolls. In the second night, there was a thunderstorm going on, and seeing the little blighters torn out of the darkness by occasional lightning was abut the most nightmarish scene I have ever seen in real life and I was glad when I closed the door behind myself for the last time.
"Ahhh, here's your problem! Somebody set this thing to 'Evil'!" :)
As a doll collector I never thought about any of my dolls being haunted, but thanks to this video I am now wondering lol j/k. Thanks it was very interesting
I have a haunted doll. Sounds like the plot of a cheesy horror movie but an old friend played with a ouiji board and one of her dolls became possessed. It moved around the room, left scratches, the whole nine yards. She ended up sealing it in a box in her basement. She gifted it to me knowing I'm a creeper and told me the story. The doll's name is Tessa and she usually behaves for me. I take her out of her box every now and then to show her off but I have to put her back. One night I forgot and fell asleep on the couch, Tessa on the floor by me. Woke up with finger/hand print bruises all up my arm. I've never forgotten since.
"Yep here's your problem. Someone set this thing to evil."
Do you think Coraline fits into the doll narrative? - people turned into dolls by sewing buttons on their eyes
Whoever on your art team made the thumbnail image for this vid is truly cursed. Bravo
I always thought dolls felt empty, but also carried an obscure presence.
When it comes to creepy dolls and the uncanny valley, nothing fits more firmly into the intersection of both for me than ball-jointed dolls. Just seeing a photo of one of them creeps me all the way out. 😱😱😱
Glaring omissions: Talking Krusty from Treehouse of Horror, Conky from TPB, and the doll that looks like George's mother in Seinfeld. _shivers_
What is TPB?
@@marlonmoncrieffe0728 Trailer Park Boys
Chucky is the reason why I hate dolls.
I always appreciate and love how Monstrum goes in-depth, origin stories/ history and connects these stories to real life and the reverence it has in today's culture.
Great one Dr. Zarka, dolls and clowns have always been some of my favorite content for folklore and horror. Please keep up the MARVELOUS work that you do.
One of the creepiest doll stories is a short story called "Sweets to thr Sweet." It's more of a voodoo doll story than a living doll tale. The story ends with a little girl holding a doll, while her brother tries to take a close look at it. The little girl tells him it's not really a doll, but just candy. She then bites the candy doll's head off, and skips away, happily munching the candy head, whilst a blood curdling scream can be heard from a bedroom down the hall.
I see the fear aspect, always have, there are other sides to this as well. My kids had several Barbie dolls, and one J.I. Joe doll. Several mornings, I would get up and have my breakfast in the livingroom where the kids had played the evening before. Toy clean-up was not always the best, and some of the positions the various Barbies, and Joe were in gave me quite a start some mornings. I guess that says more about my sleepy morning brain than anything else.
Sabrina’s doll from Pokémon fits perfectly in that list too ❤
Great video. I loved how guys kept moving the Samantha Parkington doll to different places. I'm a American Girl fan and used to read the books as a kid.
Thank you for another fascinating episode. I hope that you will one day do one about the Scandinavian “Myling”. Its origins will send chills down the spine all the while giving us a whisper of insight into the hardship women faced back in the day (And still do in some places) For those who don't have sleep on the schedule I recommend diving into the literature. Also related is “Ängla makerskor” (Eng: Angel makers)
Love the Samantha doll in the background. Great touch!
When you notice the Samantha doll moving bit by bit in the background!😂
I always loved the movie "Dead Silence" which also plays with the puppet theme. The concept of the monster was extremely creepy to me and the ending still haunts me to this day.
Monstrum videos feed an always hungry part of my brain. Thank you for your serious(ly fun) content!
That Zuni doll was one of the scariest in the 70s.
the creepy doll-like mannequins that are a part of the alien race the Autons from the episode of Terror of the Autons is a great example of doll themed horror
I used to be really scared of dolls and remember sleeping in my nieces room when her talking doll goes off at around 3 am.
Ohhh this looks good! Thanks, Dr. Z!
Loved seeing my girl Samantha’s cameo!!
Great episode Dr. Zarka, keep up the great work.
I didn't know I needed this channel SO hard
The survey was lovely, I hyped you up Dr. Emily!! As always thank you for making videos that my kiddos love and enjoy
Funny you mention creepy dolls, Dr.Z. In the Pokemon franchise, you find Shuppet and its evolution, Banette. The latter of the two is said to be born from a grudge of being thrown away. However, not all possessed dolls are evil. Two solid examples of possessed dolls as protagonists are Wizardmon from the anime "Digimon Adventure" and Geno from the video game "Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars."
I wonder if somebody is going to think this way about a Bratz doll someday with their creepy little alien eyes? Or will modern toys evaporate before they get the chance to be old and creepy?
I did some research on possessed/creepy doll stories and legends. The story of the Russian Doll maker that made them out of corpses was really unnerving, as well as the legend of the Isle of the Dolls in Mexico. Robert the doll is also super creepy. I wrote my own creepy doll story for a Puerto Rican horror anthology because it was a trope I always enjoyed in horror. The uncanny valley is as fascinating as it is disturbing.
What's the name of it? ( aunque sea en español--me gustaría buscarlo)
As far as a doll being haunted, I am a huge skeptic but it makes for interesting entertainment.
@@LindaC616 Colección de porcelana is the title of the story, you can find it in either “No cierres los ojos: Antología de relatos de horror y terror”, or in my book “El cuco te va a comer”.
@@desmodus5635 Indeed.
That was very well done and interesting. Love the "Hey Friend" from American Girls!
Must share this video immediately.
From among the scary dolls stories, here is a positive one: A crying baby doll for a school parenting class woke the student up in the middle of a house fire! The doll would cry randomly like a real baby. The house caught fire while the family was sleeping. The student woke up to see smoke and got her family out safely. Don’t know if they had smoke detectors. So, that doll saved a family. Hurray!
That's a Samantha American Girl Doll!! I had one of those! Also had Kaya. No creepy shenanigans from either lol
A lot of 80s non horror shows had more than things today. 1 Christmas movie had a lot that the later Toy story Movies did. It focused so much about the feelings of toys that, I wouldn't name my dolls afraid of hurting their feelings, or sleep in a room w/any doll. Though dolls made could hurt, like Cabbage patch kids that bit. Some actual dolls saw a lot, since they were used to smuggle supplies of medicine to treat injured soldiers during US civil war.
You forgot the tv show Are you afraid of the dark, The tale of the doll maker and The tale of the crimson clown.
I used to have nightmares of Lady Elaine when I was a child. One thing I might say about dolls and their creep factor can also be attributed to the Uncanny Valley effect.