RACHAEL ELIZABETH shares a vivid and unsettling childhood memory of a porcelain doll that she believes smiled at her, which, combined with a ghost story, has left her with a lasting fear of dolls
For as long as I can remember, the supernatural has always intrigued me, even from a young age, perhaps too young… ghosts have always been on my mind.
Naturally, my morbid interest caused many problems for my young mind: It wasn’t hard to scare me, I suffered (and still do) from horrendous nightmares involving malevolent spirits, and I do not think it is because I am ‘haunted’, but maybe it has something to do with my morbid obsession with watching and writing about the paranormal (and true crime).
However, I did have an experience when I was younger that I still recall vividly, a memory that still frightens me to this day, and it all started with a porcelain doll.
My fear of porcelain dolls
In the old days, by which I mean the 90s (insert horrified face here), there were a few trends that from today’s perspective, appear to be ludicrous. Yes, the clothes and make-up techniques have some explaining to do, but also the strange obsession everyone seemed to have with porcelain dolls.
The 90s may have seen some questionable fashion trends, but I harbour warm memories of when sleepovers and ghost stories went hand in hand, and as a young girl who loved the paranormal, the occasion warmed my spooky little heart.
There are many ghost stories that I recall from my youth, but one in particular always stuck in my mind, and to this day, I still believe it is partly to blame for my disdain (and fear) of dolls.
The premise of the ghost story was based on a young girl, Marie, who received a porcelain doll for her birthday, a doll she saw as ugly, so ugly in fact, that she begged her mother to throw it away. But her mother refused claiming it was a present that someone had bought for her. In protest, the young girl throws the doll in the cupboard under the stairs.
Over the next few nights, Marie is awakened when she hears the sound of something running around downstairs, and a high-pitched giggle as cupboard doors repeatedly slam shut; Marie complains to her parents, but they tell her she is simply having nightmares.
One night as Marie lies awake in bed, waiting, listening, she hears a door creak, the door to the cupboard under the stairs. Then, cutting through the darkness, she hears a small voice declare, “Marie, I’m on the first step” a few moments later, “Marie, I’m on the second step” … “Marie, I’m on the third step”.
The little voice continues to get louder each time it climbs to the next step, the next step, the next step until… “Marie, I’m on the landing”. Marie pulls the cover over her head, too afraid to move, as she hears her bedroom door slowly opening,
“Marie, I’m in your bedroom.”
“Marie. I’m on your bed”
The ending of the story reveals that when her mother gets up in the morning, she finds Marie at the bottom of the stairs with her head snapped around at an ungodly angle.
The story itself is probably nothing compared to the stories that are available to us now, but at the time I was barely 10 years old, but the premise of an ugly porcelain seeking revenge wasn’t lost on me.
At the time of this ghost story, myself and my older sister shared a bedroom with bunk beds. She was six years older than me, but for some reason had a large porcelain doll collection. Dozens of glass eyes stared at me from atop our wardrobes, unblinking, uncanny. They unsettled me so much my mum would drape a towel from the top bunk, so as I lay in my lower bunk I didn’t have to look at them. However, one Christmas I opened a box from my Grandma, and she had bought me a porcelain doll.
The doll had untamed ginger hair crushed under a dark green beret; it wore an itchy brown jumper and a green pleated skirt; a scattering of ginger freckles covered its porcelain skin, and its ruby red lips stuck out in a painful pout, as this doll had a broken leg bound in a tiny cast.
I hated it with every fibre of my being.
It was an ugly looking thing.
And just like the ghost story, I wasn’t allowed to get rid of the doll as it was a gift.
Horror of the dolls
One afternoon, I was playing in my bedroom, making up a new dance routine to one of the songs off the 5ive album (bear in mind I was only seven or eight!), and to my horror, as I twirled and wiggled my arms, I am eye-contact with the porcelain doll that had the broken leg, the frizzy ginger hair and painful pouting lips, and it smiled at me. In that moment of horror, I ran downstairs to my mum, scared half to death hysterically trying to explain what had just happened.
I can’t fully remember much of what happened next, but I do remember not returning to my room that day, and soon after all the dolls that once spied on me with their glazed, dead eyes were removed from their perch, never to be seen again – yet the echoes of the doll seeking revenge never fully left my mind.
Even today, almost thirty years later, I can still vividly recall the moment the doll smiled at me. This doll didn’t have an already smiling face or even a pleasant one, it was moulded, screwed up into a painful scowl to mimic the pain from its broken leg. I am convinced that the ghost story, and my doll incident, contributed to the fear of dolls I still hold to this day (and also the fear of being chased up a flight of stairs!).
It may seem like a silly story that retold as an adult would certainly bring some laughter from my audience, but it is such a vivid memory, and on a day where I was perfectly content dancing in my bedroom, my safe space, but then it was sullied by the doll that made my skin crawl – the doll that smiled as it watched me busting a few moves.
I have no explanations for my experience, it was not a made-up story from a child with an overactive imagination, a nightmare, a fever dream or anything in between; to me it is a legitimate memory, a memory that still gives me the shivers today.
Have you had a spooky experience with a porcelain doll? Tell us about it in the comments section below!
The fear of dolls is called pediophobia, read about it here on Spooky Isles: Pediophobia: Haunted Dolls And Why We Hate Them
