Whether they’re in old houses or museum cases, some objects have strange stories that got even stranger the longer that people held onto them.
Someone else did it
Don’t let Robert the Doll’s appearance fool you because, apparently, he’s way scarier than he seems. The doll was handmade around the early 1900s and owned by Key West artist Robert Otto, and that’s where the spookiness started. What happened?
Things started breaking around their house, all sorts of weird messes kept appearing out of the blue, standard ghost stuff. It wasn’t just the Ottos because the later owner, Myrtle Reuter, said the doll kept moving around by itself. She donated him to Fort East Martello Museum.
A note on the floor
You’ve probably heard about Annabelle the Doll, thanks to The Conjuring movies, but the real doll’s story was even creepier. No, she didn’t look like some spooky antique, she was a Raggedy Ann doll, it makes sense why Donna, a nursing student, took her in.
Then Annabelle started moving around by herself in Donna’s apartment. There were even claims that notes kept appearing around her, saying ‘Help Us’ and ‘Help Lou.’ Who was Lou? Donna’s friend, who woke up with scratches on his chest, unable to move. How spooky.
Behind the glass
Paintings can be haunted too, you know, and Bill Stoneham’s 1972 painting The Hands Resist Him is a great example of that. He used an old photo of himself to paint the boy in the middle, and then painted a little girl next to him, with some small hands pressing on the glass door.
That’s kind of creepy alone, but wait until you hear the story. Someone bought the picture on eBay in 2000 and saw the figures moving around in the painting at night. Yes, really, there were even claims the figures left the painting and appeared in the room in real life.
A bed with a reputation
A bed big enough for four couples? Sounds weird enough, but that’s what the Great Bed of Ware was built for in England around 1590, and it was shortly after that the hauntings started. Rumor has it that anyone who sleeps in the bed will wake up to an unexpected guest.
The bed’s maker, Jonas Fosbrooke, supposedly haunts the bed, and he’ll scratch, pinch, or bruise anyone who’s in the bed. Perhaps you should take a nap elsewhere. It’s currently in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, UK.
Back to Brighton
Turns out, even a ledger can be haunted. Take the 1915 shop ledger that Tony Benyovits once found inside an old jeweler’s shop in Brighton, UK, during demolition. He found the ledger in 1988. That’s when the trouble started, as soon as he took it home.
Strange images kept appearing in the rug, including one of a soldier with a horse and groups of people. Josephine, Tony’s daughter, said she spoke to the spirits, and they told her she needed to return the ledger to Brighton, and she did exactly that.
The case stayed locked
Time for another haunted doll, this time, it’s Mandy the Doll, currently exhibited at the Quesnel Museum in British Columbia. She was donated by a woman who said her grandmother kept Mandy locked in a chest. That should’ve been a warning sign.
According to the museum, people have been unable to record videos of Mandy in the museum. Nothing else, just Mandy, apparently. Museum workers once found her inside a locked room that had, somehow, become messed up overnight, kind of like after a child has a tantrum.
Under the floorboards
The year was 1972, and the site was an old farmhouse near Wagga Wagga, Australia. Kerry Walton was looking for bottles with his brother when he found a wooden doll. Nothing strange so far. The doll then seemed to move in the sack on the way home, so they called it Letta Me Out.
Walton apparently witnessed the doll moving by itself and saw scuff marks appearing on it out of nowhere. That’s not all, because apparently, animals get really aggressive when they’re near it, and some people claim they feel sick near it. It supposedly holds the soul of a Romani boy.
A shelf in Dorset
With a name like ‘the Bettiscombe screaming skull,’ it should be no surprise that this artifact is haunted. The story goes that, shortly before dying, a Black slave begged his owner to bury him in the West Indies, but she refused and buried him in a local graveyard.
Then the screaming started. Yes, rumor has it that the skull kept screaming, to the point where the slave owner had the body dug up and buried back on the property. It stopped screaming after that, although moving it apparently causes it to start screaming again.
Keep it near home
That’s not all for skulls, as the Theophilus Brome skull has a similar story, with the same message of ‘don’t take it away.’ Brome was a man who died in Somerset, England, in 1670, but before dying, he told people to keep his body in the farmhouse.
They didn’t listen, of course, it wouldn’t be much of a story if they did, and when they tried to remove the skull, it started screaming. It started moaning, too, right until they put the skull back at the farmhouse.Â
A doll on the altar
You’d think at this point, people would stop buying dolls altogether, but no. There’s a shrine in Pulau Ubin, Singapore, that contains a Barbie doll that’s dressed up to look like a little German girl. According to the story, a young German girl was fleeing British soldiers during World War I.
She slipped, and sadly, she died. But the legends say that her spirit still haunts the doll, although she seems to be more of a friendly spirit than anything evil. Gamblers visit the shrine and ask for her blessing because she supposedly gives good luck to people.
The canal kept getting dolls
One doll hanging in the trees is creepy enough. But try to picture a whole island of them, and you’ll get something similar to La Isla de las Muñecas in Mexico City. Don Julián Santana Barrera lived on the island and said he once found a girl’s body in the area’s canals.
She had drowned, so he put up a doll in her memory, then another one, until the whole island became covered in thousands of dolls. Visitors to the island claim they’ve seen the dolls turning their heads by themselves and even heard them whispering.
Faces in the hallway
Most superstitious people know there’s a lot more going on with mirrors. Just take the one at Myrtles Plantation, it’s one that contains the spirits of slave owner Sara Woodruff and her two children. They became stuck inside the glass because nobody covered it when they died.
At least, that’s what the story says. People say they’ve seen handprints appearing on it, seemingly out of nowhere, and these handprints kept appearing after the glass was replaced. Something tells us you don’t want to look twice at it.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
The haunted hotels that turn into pop-up attractions
Haunted hotels aren’t mere places to stay. In fact, some of them turn into temporary thrill zones during spooky season, with ghost hunts in morgues & ballroom parties in old concert halls. Here are ten haunted hotels that turn into pop-up attractions worth visiting. What’s the scariest one in your opinion?
