Dolls have always freaked me out, and apparently, I’m not alone. There’s a reason spooky dolls have become a well used cliche in horror media today.
We’ve already spoken about Robert, but let’s investigate a few more of his fiendish friends.
Annabelle
Annabelle is one of the more infamous vessels of alleged evil, as proposed by the similarly infamous Ed and Lorraine Warren. Despite my personal opinion of these two, Annabelle’s influence is too mainstream to ignore.
Allegedly, Annabelle was a seemingly normal Raggedy Ann doll, belonging to a student nurse, who began to notice oddities around the house. The doll was said to move whilst unattended and a visiting medium suggested it was haunted by the spirit of a deceased child, named Annabelle. The student and her roommates decided to accept the spirit into their home, but that’s were things started to get spooky. Annabelle began to leave notes around the house and eventually “attacked” a friend of the girls. That’s when the Warrens got involved, claiming the doll was demonically possessed and whisking it away to their occult museum, where she sits in a locked cabinet, reinforced with holy water, because of course.
Annabelle has gone on to star in The Conjuring cinematic universe, albeit with a creepy cliche make over.
Okiku
Okiku’s story began around 1918, where she was bought in Sapporo, Japan, by a young man as a gift for his two year old sister – named Okiku. Okiku the doll became Okiku the girl’s favourite play thing. They did everything together, and the little girl even gave it her own name – something we also saw in Robert’s story.
However, things weren’t all sunshine and butterflies for long. Sadly, the little girl died of yellow fever, around a year after she was gifted the doll. Although the family hoped to lay the girl to rest with her doll, this didn’t happen, and Okiku the doll was placed on the family’s home alter.
In some versions of the story, weird things began to happen in the family’s home after little Okiku passed away. This was said to include the usual ghosty goings on, such as flickering lights and strange dreams, but the doll was said to be by the family’s side when they awoke.
Then, something even stranger started happening – the doll’s hair began to grow.
Originally sporting a traditional shoulder length cut, Okiku’s hair became noticeably longer. The family concluded that the little girl’s spirit took up residence in her beloved doll and that was that.
Eventually however, the family moved away and, believing that the doll and the girl’s spirit were connected by the physical distance between it and the grave, they entrusted it to the local temple.
Here, Okiku’s hair began grow wildly, similar in consistency to a child’s hair, complete with split ends and all. Eventually it reached down to her knees, and the temple attendants have taken to trimming it every so often. She is also said to visit the priests in dreams.
Some sources claim a sample of this hair was given to a lab, which confirmed it was human in origin, but I’ve also read reports that state the temple refuse to let the doll be subject to any tests at all.
It has also been claimed that Okiku’s mouth is slowly opening and there are, by the looks of things, little teeth growing inside.
What is certain, is that Okiku can be visited at the Mannen-ji Temple in Iwamizawa, Japan, where the attends still regularly trim Okiku’s hair.
Letta
Short for “Letta Me Out”, this creepy little bugger is said to be around 200 years old, and allegedly made in Eastern Europe. Letta now lives in Australia, where his owner, Kerry Walton, claims to have found him in an abandoned house in the 1970s.
As always, Kerry noticed weird things in his home after inviting Letta into it. Scuff marks began to appear on the floor close to Letta, and his children began to have nightmares of him – which is no surprise, he’s just a little creepy looking. Kerry even claims that a psychic told him that the spirit of a drowned boy lives in the doll.
Letta, who is child-sized and has human hair, is also said to move all by himself. There are several videos online claiming to show Letta moving, and he even has his own Facebook Page, where you can keep up with his appearances, as he often tours Australia under the headline of the country’s most haunted object.
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