Homespun Haints: True Ghost Stories
True ghost stories are scarier (and funnier) when you hear them from the real people who experienced them. We’re Becky and Diana, and we interview people who have seen ghosts--so you can feel their fear with them. Each episode features true, personal stories of ghosts, demons, haints, hauntings, haunted houses, and paranormal experiences, sprinkled with humorous conversations about the random strange events in our own haunted lives.
Homespun Haints: True Ghost Stories
Peekaboo, Is That Doll Watching You? Interview With a Doll Historian Witch
Doll historian and witch Heather Green unpacks the mysterious world of haunted dolls, explaining how they function as portals for spirits rather than becoming possessed objects themselves. She draws on her extensive knowledge of doll history and the occult to help us distinguish between "inspirited" dolls that have absorbed energy over time, and "ensouled" dolls that serve as anchors for specific spirits.
In this interview, Heather teaches us:
• Dolls can be "inspirited" with energy from years of human interaction without being haunted
• Most haunted dolls function as portals rather than possessed objects
• Destroying a haunted doll can make the haunting worse
• Tarot can be an effective tool for communicating with doll-attached spirits
Heather also hosts a weekly podcast called "The Witches Movie Coven," discussing films from a witch's perspective. Learn more about her at https://www.heathergreene.net, or in the show notes for this episode at homespunhaints.com.
And remember, there's no such thing as a free kitten.
The Activity Continues is a podcast where three soul friends talk about all things paranormal. Ghosts, hauntings, psychics, movies and TV shows (especially The Dead Files) and other spooky and spooky-adjacent things as well.
We also like to interview people in the paranormal community as well as past Dead Files clients and other interesting people.
Sometimes we even tell your stories.
So, grab your beverage of choice and join us where… The Activity Continues.
It's late at night and everyone is asleep. You wake up to a sound and just beyond the veil of sleep, you hear the pitter-patter of little feet. What was that? You look over at the antique bisque doll sitting on top of your dresser, was it? No, it couldn't have been, could it? Was the doll taking a stroll while you slept. Our guest, heather Green, is an expert on haunted dolls and the occult and how these themes are portrayed in film Plus. We'll meet some of her dolls and learn which ones are actually inspirited. Today on Homespun Haints. Hello, hainted Loves, welcome to Homespun hates. I am becky and I am diana, and today, for you, we're going to talk about haunted dolls. Yet again.
Speaker 2:Why is this such a popular topic, becky?
Speaker 1:oh well, I don't know, maybe it's because they're really cool. Oh yes, I have a bat on my head. You do yes, this is a gift from Lady Teal, of Lady Teal's Curios.
Speaker 2:I've had a real bat in my hair. That sounds unpleasant. Oh no, it was adorable. I was in Delphi and I was watching the sunset over this beautiful gorge and this little adorable bat just flew right into my hair and snuggled up next to my neck and it didn't move because I'd never touched a bat before. So I just let it sit there and then just flew away. It was so sweet and innocent. And then, you know, 10 years later, a bat got in my house and I freaked out. And that wasn't no, so it didn't train me to love bats, unfortunately.
Speaker 1:Delphine bats don't have rabies because they're actually oracles.
Speaker 2:That's probably true.
Speaker 1:Well, speaking of adorable things, yes, we're going to be talking about dolls today. We are going to be interviewing Heather Green, who is just a delightful person to talk to. She is also a film historian, a doll restorer, a doll historian all of the things. She also has her own podcast about dolls and hauntings and movies you don't say Well speaking of adorable things, you know, we have so much floof in our house.
Speaker 2:Are your children getting hairy yet? Do they count or no?
Speaker 1:No, no, I'm talking about the quadrupeds. We have Ella, that you guys have seen on this show multiple times, so many times she's short hair. And then we have Egon, who is the Kazon puppy, who is just floof.
Speaker 2:I think it'd be really cute if you put a corset on him, because he'd have a cinched waist with all that.
Speaker 1:Oh my god he would, but the floofmeister that we have is Ripley Ripley the cat.
Speaker 2:And she was nice to me for the first time ever in my years and years of knowing her.
Speaker 1:She's so mean to everybody, she's just like awful, a little asshole. So well I say little. This cat is enormous, she's a big asshole. We're still not quite sure what she is. They said cat on the adoption papers.
Speaker 2:She's already done five figures worth of damage to your house.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, okay yeah, let me get started here. Okay. So this cat, first of all. She is very cute, that's true. She's got that going for her. Just a gorgeous floofy chonk. Like you pick her up and you can just feel the chonk like warbling under the soft fur. But this cat, I swear, that's all she's got going for her.
Speaker 2:She's lovely from a distance.
Speaker 1:She's mean you can't snuggle with her right Because she'll just like try to bite your nose. And yes, as you mentioned Diana, she did thousands and thousands of dollars worth of damage to our house by peeing on the carpet she got up on, like my son's. First of all, she was peeing in his trash can, which seems impossible.
Speaker 2:If she can do that, she can pee in the toilet.
Speaker 1:She won't pee in the toilet, she won't pee in the litter box, but but, and it's not out of spite, like this poor cat.
Speaker 3:Sure.
Speaker 1:I mean, she did use the trash can. She's like well, it's waste. We removed the trash can because the cleaning ladies like freaked out when they saw it. They're like, which one of your children did this? And I'm like the fuzzy one. So then she was like backing her butt up to the wall behind the dresser and peeing down the wall and onto the floor and of course we kept like there was a smell in the room. We couldn't find it and it wasn't until we moved the dresser out and we realized it had soaked all the way through the subfloor. The floor is just completely ruined. We have to rip out all of the carpet, put in hardwoods upstairs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was not cheap. I've started teaching violin and I got some like nice flyers printed and somehow okay, this cat has no opposable thumb. She's not like a Hemingway, not a polydactyl cat, but somehow she managed to get a hold of those flyers, drag them like 50 feet to the other end of the basement and then took a big old dump on them. I'm like, why do we keep this cat? I'm at my wit's end. So, sean Nigro if you remember him from the Writer's Block podcast and Eight Sparks Media, he is also a children's book author and he's commissioned me to do some illustrations for him.
Speaker 2:Oh, another one. Yay, I'll put the link in the show notes, the one you already illustrated a boy and his fish, cool.
Speaker 1:Thank you. I went out and bought a very, very expensive set of blendable colored pencils to do some of the pre-work. Well, this is the thing this cat loves pencils. She likes to play fetch with them. She adores pencils. She'll like stand at the top of the stairs and fling them downstairs and then chase them and come back out and fetch them, or you can throw a pencil for her. I've lost paint brushes. This way I have to hide all of my art supplies, not just for my daughter, but for my cat.
Speaker 2:From all of your offspring.
Speaker 1:Yesterday we come out and the dog. My husband's like what's the dog eating? Oh no, yep. You could barely see like crimson as the color both ends of the pencil. It was just like just a tiny little knot of stick left. You could just barely tell what it had been.
Speaker 2:The good news is when your dog poops crimson, you won't have to worry that he's bleeding to death. Yeah, that's created another issue today. We won't have to worry that he's bleeding to death.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's created another issue today. We're gonna have to do some scrubbing. Did I mention all the floof? I know what's happening because the cat hates the dog. So she is leaving pencils, where he will get to them, where he will eat them, where he will get sick from them. It's all a plan she's got. She is evil. I go back and I'm like okay, where did the pencil go? And my husband's like you better put up all your pencils. So I went in the dining room and I started putting them up and I was like okay, I know I had 72 to begin with. I can count and see how many are missing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I thought maybe one or two. There were 11 pencils missing. Ripley, we're in the house. We don't really leave the house. We're in the house because we work from home, so it's not like she had a lot of opportunity to just like walk by us with 11 pencils in her mouth and have us not notice.
Speaker 2:You would have heard it because there's a wood floor in the dining room, so as she batted it off the table, it would have definitely clunk. You would have thought yeah, mysterious.
Speaker 1:So I looked and I looked, I looked for hours.
Speaker 2:She had them all stashed away and plus your old paintbrushes and pens and pencils.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, those are long gone. It was just the pencils, it was just the pencils.
Speaker 2:She finds a new hiding spot for every stash. Oh my gosh, I guess. So what a resourceful cat.
Speaker 1:Can you imagine how much work it must have taken for her to like, one by one, take these pencils out of their case and take them upstairs and put them in a pile, in a pile behind the door of my daughter's bedroom.
Speaker 2:Well, becky, you know what they say when you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. That's how your cat feels she's destroyed our floors.
Speaker 1:She's destroyed my art supplies. She's destroying the dog's intestine poor dog. I can't boot her out, though she is my child.
Speaker 2:It's like a haunted mirror. You just can't sell it, you can't get rid of it. Why would anybody be willing to take your cat if that's the the description right there?
Speaker 1:on everything and we'll steal your art supplies we can no longer afford this cat. Twenty thousand dollar adoption fee just to cover expenses this is the thing like when you see free kitten. There's no such thing as a free kitten, such thing as a free kitten.
Speaker 2:There's no such thing as a free kitten, oh.
Speaker 1:But maybe Hainted Loves. Maybe one of you can just give us a little piece of advice. What do I do with this cat besides just open the door? Yes, before we go any farther, speaking of our Hainted Loves, we have a new patron to give a shout out to. Who is it?
Speaker 2:Who is it? Tell me who? Who is it? Tell me, who is it.
Speaker 1:Huge shout out to Sharon. Sharon has joined our Patreon and we are so grateful for you, sharon, thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Thank you, sharon, and welcome.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the weirdness. Aren't you glad you joined?
Speaker 2:Come and play with us forever and ever, and ever and ever, maybe, sharon? Has some advice for us, sharon, if you can help. If you're a cat whisperer, please get in touch. Any cat whisperers listening, please get in touch. And, while you're at it, be like Sharon and join our Patreon, because it's awesome and you get all this interesting stuff plus commercial free episodes, unlike this one.
Speaker 1:Oh man, I had a rough day. What happened, honey? I was out with the guys and they well, and, and they said I wasn't spooky enough. Oh honey, how could they say that to you? You're hella spooky. You think so, Of course. After all, you came up with the ectoplasm being ghost jizz theory and you've been scratched by more horny ghosts than anyone else.
Speaker 1:I know, Well, I suppose you're right, but if you're really worried about it, I have just the thing. Oh wow, a spooky AF t-shirt. That's right. Our spooky AF line comes in shirt, sweatshirt, pillow and even a high quality mug man. Those are super awesome, especially for something with profanity on it. What's even better, all these items were hand-lettered exclusively from Homespun Hates by world-renowned calligrapher Nikki Malick. Holy, ghostly cannoli. That's amazing. From now on, whenever you brandish your spooky AF gear, no one will accuse you of being boring. Yeah, I'm spooky AF. Visit HomespunHatescom for all spooky AF merchandise. Hello, hainted Loves. Welcome to Homespun Haints. I'm Becky and I'm Diana. Today on the show, we are thrilled to bring on Heather Green. I met Heather at Mystic South in 2024. She was giving an amazing presentation on dolls. She loves all things dolls. She restores them, she collects them, she knows everything about the history of them and, of course, she knows everything about the hauntings of dolls. So, heather, thank you so much for being here on the show today. Welcome.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me. You know I love to talk about dolls, so I'm happy to do that with both of you.
Speaker 1:But dolls aren't the only thing that you're a scholar in. You also have a book out Lights, camera Witchcraft, which is all about how witches are portrayed in the film industry. How does that relate to dolls? Are they just both two obsessions of yours? How does that all fit together?
Speaker 3:I don't know that they do fit together outside of Chucky and Annabelle. Of course there's always overlap, you know. But I have always loved dolls, just like I've always loved movies, you know I can't say that they correspond outside of just being two obsessions, as you said.
Speaker 3:I grew up watching movies, loving movies, and then studied them in college. So I do have I am a film historian, I have degrees in film history. You add the occult in and I told someone this weekend when I was talking about haunted dolls. I said if you can find an obsession that's not occult related and make it occult related, your magic becomes more powerful and it's just more joyous.
Speaker 1:Oh, I like that. So you mentioned also that you have loved dolls your entire life, so I am assuming that maybe you even collected them as a child.
Speaker 3:I think my parents collected them for me as a child probably.
Speaker 3:But yes, I did. And as soon as I had the opportunity myself, when I got to college I even had my dolls out in my first apartment on a little shelf some of the mostly from my childhood and then began collecting Barbies. Eventually I did sell off a lot of those. I don't have a whole lot of those that collection left, but I have since, probably in the last five or six years, started a collection again and then of course started restoring and all kinds of other things and it kind of took off and took on its own life. What's the oldest doll that I have that I finished restoring?
Speaker 3:Who's who sits in my collection is, is um, is these two and I this one? Right here, we call her peekaboo. Oh, their eyes go um. Yeah, she's. Yes, they do um, but I can't. It's hard to show you there. There we go, yeah, and she's a bisque german doll, um, and she has a composition jointed body. So sometime in the 1800s German and French industry makers started to make jointed dolls which were more fun to play with. See, this is the best part Everybody. This creeps everybody out. Are you ready? Yeah, well, if those who are not watching won't see it, but what I'm doing is putting her hands over her eyes, peekaboo. What I'm doing is putting her hands over her eyes Peek-a-boo, gotcha, but that's the function of it.
Speaker 3:They started to make them jointed so children can have more realistic play with them. So she's probably from 1880 or 1890. And she's in pretty good condition. She's got her original dress and everything, so she right now is the oldest one that I have that I know of. There's a couple other jointed ones in the back. I don't have the exact date on yet. Wow, but that's peekaboo Nice.
Speaker 1:Do you restore the dolls in your own home? Do you have like a studio that you work from?
Speaker 3:Yes, I do, I have. We've converted our garage into an art room because we have several artists in our house, nice, and so we have a portion of it is the doll restore area and the other portion is the fine art studio, so we do have that in our garage. I also am lucky enough to have a. My partner is an industrial artist and has a massive shop and studio with all the tools, and so whenever I need anything a little bit more unique or different or I need some help, he's always ready to step in and assist.
Speaker 1:Before we talk about the dolls that you have that are haunted, I wanted to touch on something that you mentioned in your lecture which is and I've mentioned this on the show several times, since I found that really influential what you said that dolls themselves aren't haunted, except maybe with the exceptions of Robert the Doll and Annabelle and some of those like really, really, really, I guess haunted dolls, but rather they have portals within them. Am I getting that right? Is that how you described it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's how I understand it and that's how I perceive it is that every doll can be what we know of as haunted. In fact, most dolls do contain some energy, even if it's just from the factory. Okay, and I differentiate between inspirited and sold when we're talking about haunted dolls. If you remember from the workshop, the inspirited dolls, dolls that, for example, like my little peekaboo, has been around for a hundred plus years, has has pulled in all the energy from hugs and stuff, so they get they can get a really intense haunted like feeling, even though they aren't a portal for a spirit. Um, so you have that. And then you have those that actually are in sold, the ones that actually are a portal for a spirit and, like you said, it's a portal, it's not a box.
Speaker 3:A doll can be a box, but 99 percent of time I believe and I haven't looked at every haunted doll- there is, but they're more of a portal, a place that a spirit has attached itself to that comes through from where it is and they come it. So when you hear the pitter-patter of little feet across the floor from a spirit that might be coming through a doll, it's not the actual doll, it's not the physical doll that's making the pitter-patter, it's the spirit coming through the doll making the pitter-patter. Now, I am not a paranormal investigator and, again, I have not seen every single doll that's haunted. However, this is my experience and I have spoken to a number of other spirit workers and paranormal investigators that work with dolls that do agree with that concept. Again, that's not to say that there aren't dolls out there that are more like spirit boxes, but most dolls are not. They're portals, they're a place that the that the spirit attaches to, that can come through to to communicate with you or to do what it needs to do in this life got it.
Speaker 3:So you know my haunted doll back here. She has recently moved to my office. She's behind me, um, and if you can see, the clown above her is pointing to her. She has a white bib and a dark dress. Um, she is the portal for a, a woman who used to restore dolls. Who who passed Her name was Mary, so I call the doll Mary and um, she was living out out of my office in the main room, but she's since moved in here and is much happier in here. We have less spirit disturbances now, ah, I see.
Speaker 1:So what kind of disturbances did you have when she was out there?
Speaker 3:Mary the doll loved to play Forza 5 on the Xbox. Basically, we've had encounters with Mary. She has come upstairs to our living room and given us messages. I used to row to communicate with spirit, so we've had some communication with her and she just wants to make sure her dolls many of which I inherited, including the one that she's using as a portal I'm okay, so it's a very positive. She's a very positive spirit, just kind of watching over, but she was the location where she was in was right behind our video game setup that has a driving wheel, and so on occasion my son would be sitting down near it doing his thing and all of a sudden the wheel would start to, you know, calibrate or something, but the power's off and nobody's near it.
Speaker 3:And you can't, it just all of a sudden we're good and so she. She was trying to play, I think, after watching it. So I said I have a spirit that likes fours of five, but that has not happened since she's moved in here, she just wanted to be here where the action takes place.
Speaker 3:I think this. This is my office where I work. I'm an editor at Llewellyn Worldwide where I do podcasts, and my weekly podcast she's now on that, which she absolutely loves probably, so she's getting a little more of a different type of action.
Speaker 1:Well, since you brought it up, tell us about your podcast.
Speaker 3:Sure, the Witches Movie Coven is nine o'clock Eastern time every Wednesday and we talk about movies from a witch's perspective, so everybody on there identifies in some way as a witch or a cult practitioner. There's five of us and it's live, so, yeah, so you get to be in the chat and we respond to the people in the chat. We have lots of regulars that are wonderful and, in fact, talking about dolls. One of my co-hosts is Patti Negri, who's a well-known paranormal investigator, medium psychic witch, and her book, which I did the foreword for, is called Dollcraft Awesome. She talks about poppet magic and dolls and she is a co-lover of dolls we have lots of. We could probably talk for hours and hours, she and I, on the phone about her collection and our love of dolls, but this is coming out in June this year.
Speaker 1:Now I understand that she actually does have a haunted doll, correct?
Speaker 3:Yes, well, I don't know how her doll is haunted, but she has Belle, and Belle is also on the podcast. She sits right behind Patty, just like Mary does. Mary and Belle may have a tea party at some point.
Speaker 2:We're hoping to get them together.
Speaker 3:The haunted doll tea party. Yeah, we're hoping to get them together, but I don't know exactly whether Belle is a portal or where the spirit's trapped in Belle. That's a conversation with Patty, so I don't know.
Speaker 1:Other than your experiences with Mary, do you have personal experiences with hauntings in general that you know kind of have led you into this world that you would like to share with us?
Speaker 3:I've always been sensitive, not to spirits in terms of ghosts like what we know as ghosts, but to the energy which is what led me to witchcraft and the occult to begin with, to know that there's something else more, and I've always had this sense that there was. But over the past five, six years I've become increasingly interested in this practice as more than just the natural things that I do in my witchcraft. And this really got set off when my partner's mother decided she was going to show up. I realized maybe I really like this, I'm very interested in this work and then also getting involved in dolls and again, blending those two. It's pulling at me to do more work with spirits and ghosts.
Speaker 3:And one day we were sitting there and the TV started going on and off. We weren't having any electrical storms or anything and we realized at that point I started to do communication and realized it was my partner's mother and she decides she shows up randomly. We get a little whiff of cigarettes and nobody in the house smokes. We get a little whiff of coffee at like three in the afternoon and nobody drinks coffee in our house at three o'clock in the afternoon. Or a TV will go on or a candle, electric candle will go on. We know that it's her and you know we say hi and welcome. Do you have something to say? Always check to see if she has a message. A lot of the time it's just she's just checking in on him and he was one of 10 children and she was very nurturing and I think she still pops around checking on her children every once in a while. She is not attached to a doll, she just pops in. It's very funny. You know, after talking about her right now, she'll probably show up later.
Speaker 2:You mentioned several times, communication is key. What form of communication do you use?
Speaker 3:Tarot is what I use most often. I find that to be very effective for me. I think if you're getting into this work at all whether it's for witchcraft or for paranormal investigation beginnings you have to start with something simple and something that you're comfortable with. You know you can't jump into using Tarot if you've never used the Tarot before, because there's a system to it. Oracle is a little easier, of course. Using yes no, like the pendulum I have used pendulum. One of my children is beginning to get into this and loves the dowsing rods and will use those yes no is the easiest if you're getting started. So there's a number of ways to do that, and sometimes intuition it's the best of all. I mean, all of these methodologies, all of these modalities need your intuition to begin with. You have to learn to trust that, and then you need to pick a modality that's comfortable for you and practice and just let the spirit come, let the messages come, and they will. It's really, really fun.
Speaker 1:Does your, your partner's siblings? Have they mentioned that their mom has popped into?
Speaker 3:Yeah, a couple of them who are more open to it and sensitive to it have mentioned have noticed things. Yeah, we definitely have had some things with the other siblings as well.
Speaker 1:Cool, that's nice to know that she's. She's visiting everybody.
Speaker 3:Now I will say that our peekaboo right here, just getting back to the portal thing portal versus energy is that this doll right here and I'm holding her and I can feel her energy has very, very intense energy, extremely intense energy, which is one of the reasons she creeps everybody out, because even though you don't sense it as energy.
Speaker 3:You can't name it. Everybody that sees her can sense it she has. I would not be surprised if at some point, a spirit comes through her. It she has. I would not be surprised at some point a spirit comes through her. Oh, yeah, yeah. Um, it may not be. It may just be she's been loved and tossed around and been in a lot of families, but right now, as far as I can tell, she'd be a primary target to become a portal. Um, I don't know what she's looking at.
Speaker 1:She's looking at claribel oh yes, there you go. Speaking of claribel. Claribel is your annabelle look-alike. She's a Raggedy Ann, can we see?
Speaker 3:her. She's right here. Yes, she's right here.
Speaker 2:When I was a kid, I had a doll that looked like that, but with brown hair. Is that the same basic idea or the same company?
Speaker 3:She's Raggedy Ann. Raggedy Ann always has red hair, but a Ragdoll's a Ragdoll. I mean you might have just had a knockoff Typical. Yeah, Raggedy Ann is red hair.
Speaker 2:So that was the exact same model as the classic Annabelle doll, the one that you've got there.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, many people who do not follow haunted dolls. In truth, they think that the Annabelle in the movies is what Annabelle actually looked like. And that is untrue. Annabelle is a rag doll that looks exactly like this, and she's right now in a box locked up because she is very dangerous like Robert the doll, and so she's behind glass and I think in Connecticut is where I think she's locked up glass in, I think in connecticut is where I think she's locked up right.
Speaker 3:But yeah, this stall I got for my haunted doll lectures to show people that the real annabelle is actually just a simple rag doll and we named her clarabelle um, and she was able to go on to a pagan convention this weekend and got and I got lots of hugs, so she's filled with positive energy she's not going to hurt anybody. She is not haunted. She looks sweet.
Speaker 1:She is. I had one too. Well, I had a Raggedy Ann and a Raggedy Andy, which I don't hear too much about, the Raggedy Andys, but I guess they were a thing too.
Speaker 2:I think I had one as well. I remember two, but again I think mine were a different brand or something because they had dark hair.
Speaker 3:She was like Annabelle was in the factory and created sometime in the 60s. Okay, so exact replica of her.
Speaker 3:And so, yeah, she's been well loved and she got some big hugs. This weekend I read in a book about Japanese doll culture. An anthropologist talked to a little girl about her doll and the doll culture in Japan and why they believe dolls can become inspirited or ensouled, and she said well, if you love it enough, it will come to life. I love that. I love that concept, Because if you love it enough and you know you could actually become inspirited in a positive way, it can become ensouled in a positive way. And so you wind up I'm'm gonna put her back right here so you wind up with understanding why dolls are filled with, with these positive energy, even if they don't actually wind up with a spirit attached to them.
Speaker 2:They are filled with energy and that's what you're sensing from her so it feels like humans have some control over the fate of their dolls. If you bought a brand new doll for your child, took it out of the packaging, what would you do to ensure that it was full of love and not able to become a portal for evil in some way? You know, like how do you take action with a brand new doll to make?
Speaker 3:sure that it just stays an innocent doll doll. To make sure that it just stays an innocent doll. Well, if you want it to just be a doll and just a toy, you know you just love it. In the Japanese folkloric belief, the way you treat it is how the doll will end. So if you treat it poorly, it's going to fill with negative energy. If you love it enough, it will become alive, as the little girl says. If you love it enough it will be filled with positive energy. And you know the like, the blend, and you know you're not going to hug a doll every two hours or whatever in your practical lives.
Speaker 3:But that's the concept. It's the filling of that energy, and whatever energy you fill it with will be there. It'll remain a cup of cauldron for that kind of energy. How to keep it from becoming a portal for a spirit? Protection methods. You know the idea that a doll could potentially become evil. It's so rare so I don't worry about that. The whole Chucky lore it's fun, it's great.
Speaker 3:There are a few dolls that are problematic, but the chance of a doll coming getting a spirit that's going to come at you with a meat cleaver there are way worse things in our world to worry about than that. I wouldn't worry about it. If you truly have anxiety about it, you can. I actually make little obsidian bracelets for dolls which you can put on. If a doll is starting to act funny, you can surround it in salt. You can. Protection on yourself there are things you can do, but the chances of a doll is starting to act funny, you can surround it in salt, you can protection on yourself. There are things you can do, but the chances of a doll becoming evil, um are very rare.
Speaker 2:Do you have any theories as to why those dolls that are purported to be the most evil dolls you know, robert and annabelle, etc. How did they end up the way that they were?
Speaker 3:I think that things can be. The doll can become a portal in the way anything can become an object of obsession for a spirit. It's not about the doll so much as it is about what the spirit wants to accomplish or why the spirit. So the question is, why is the spirit here? It's not. Why is it attached to the doll? And then the doll just becomes a convenient usage. So a child, for example, that dies unexpectedly might then use their own doll. Oh, okay, in Japan that's similar the child whose doll it was died unexpectedly and then they used the doll as their pathway in and that's why it's a portal. They're connected to that already.
Speaker 3:Another way to great for ancestor work, for example, a grandmother might use their doll that their now granddaughter has as a way in to communicate. So it's sort of a link to life, a link to their life, or it's a link to someone they want to communicate with or a place. If a doll is in a place they want to inhabit, they might use a doll that's in that place. So it's no different than anything else, whether it's just a teacup or a.
Speaker 1:Right Dolls may be particularly prone to this, just because A they're anthropomorphic and, b they do receive all of this energy from a child's love.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they're important to us, so why not right, If a spirit's trying to make an impression?
Speaker 2:why not? Because somebody's treating this object like a human. Yeah, children act as though their doll is a real human that they're talking to. That must be an experience for a spirit who hasn't been spoken to like a real human in 100 years or however long.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that may be another reason that they do it. I mean, I think the question again goes back to what does the spirit want?
Speaker 1:Sure, there's a common horror movie trope about dolls that you will like. Dispose of a doll. That's problematic and the doll just keeps coming back and you keep. Is there any truth to this lore?
Speaker 3:yeah, that's annabelle. She keep, they keep throwing her out and she keeps coming back. I think hollywood um, what hollywood does with witchcraft and the paranormal when they're representing it, is they take something that's difficult to understand or project and make it literal. So when they say a doll is coming back, they're going to actually make it literal because they're doing a short it's a short period of time. They've got to tell a story. It's more creepy if the doll actually is burned and then walks out of the fire and shows back up in your living room.
Speaker 3:If you burn most of these dolls, you are not going to have that doll come back. That's just not going to happen. But what can happen and this is what I was telling folks this weekend in my workshop is that just because you have destroyed or thrown out the doll doesn't mean the spirit's gone, because it's a portal Right. So what can come back is the spirit Ridding yourself of the doll. The body is not necessarily ridding yourself of a problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would worry that the spirit would attach to something else if I destroyed its home.
Speaker 3:There you go.
Speaker 2:While it was in my house.
Speaker 3:Right If it's using a doorway, closing the door and shutting the door and locking it isn't necessarily going to make the spirit not come and want to knock somewhere else Sure.
Speaker 3:And so if you're really experiencing I have one slide in my presentation say so my doll tried to kill me is the title If you are really experiencing a problem with a spirit, whether it's attached to a doll or attached to anything, you need to have a professional paranormal investigator that you know is legit, that can come in, that has the experience to handle it, Because, like I said, ridding yourself of the thing it's attached to is not going to necessarily rid you.
Speaker 3:So the doll itself may not come back, but the spirit may come back, which is what Hollywood's suggesting, but quite literally the doll comes back Annabelle. They keep throwing her out.
Speaker 3:She keeps coming back Right right, right, a little scary In one of the books that I've worked on as an editor, called Unquiet Voices by Rob and Noni Douglas, and I highly recommend this to anyone who really wants to dive into paranormal investigation from an occult perspective not witchcraft, but an occult perspective. It's really in depth, great for the beginner as well as people who are changing the way they work with it similar to the way what I'm doing, but they stress this as well is that do not do anything If it's something's dangerous do not do anything that you're uncomfortable with or not experienced with.
Speaker 1:Get somebody to help. Well, that goes for anything, not just in the occult. Don't run a chemistry experiment unless you know what you're doing Plumbing electric work. Yeah, so I had a situation where I had acquired some dolls because people just send them to us, and Diana was Diana and I are in different states Diana's in Tulsa, I'm here in Atlanta, so Diana was visiting and she was staying in my basement and I had the dolls in the room that I'm in now, before it was refinished, before it was refinished, and both her and my husband, at various points throughout this period, saw like the light was in this room and they saw what looked like a shadow of little feet walking by under the door. So are you saying that that wasn't physically the doll getting up and moving? That was the spirit somehow.
Speaker 3:I guessing, I'm, I'm guessing it was the spirit that was causing that, not the doll's feet.
Speaker 3:I mean it's using, it's using the reflection of the doll, it's using the energy of the doll to create that, but it's not the actual doll. I'm sure if you went in there the doll was probably still sitting exactly where you put it. Yeah, and that's when people say well, it's not haunted, you're making this up because the doll actually hasn't moved. I've never had a doll come and hop up on the couch next to me. Mary doesn't move, mary's right there. If people say they and they have said I sense Mary moving, it's the energy, it's a spirit that's circling or coming in and out of her. You know, I'm saying that now, watch. Tomorrow I'll be like calling you guys back.
Speaker 1:Mary just drove my car off right, Keeping a really close eye on her right now, just in case she waves.
Speaker 2:She realized she could turn the Xbox on herself.
Speaker 3:But yeah, it's usually just the spirit. Now again, I am not a paranormal investigator, so that's a really good question to ask for people who have gone and seen lots and lots of dolls and other types of things to see. This is from my perspective and my experience with dolls. I have over 1500 dolls in my house right now in various states of restoration, and I also resell them. So I have from new to modern and all of them are filled with energy, because they're all old dolls that I take in. None of them have moved by themselves, but they all have energy floating around them. So things do shift and change with them, especially as they interact with each other and they speak to me as spirit and energy speaks to you. And of course, then there's Mary and Peekaboo and another. So that's my experience with dolls.
Speaker 1:Another thing that I learned from listening to you is that there's certain plastic dolls that will develop a toxic mold over time. Oh yes, and you have to be very, very careful when you restore them.
Speaker 2:That's a bad kind of haunting.
Speaker 1:Tell us about that so people can avoid that If anybody out there decides they want to be an amateur doll restorer.
Speaker 3:Yeah, if you're restoring dolls, even if you're not restoring dolls, if you want to buy an old doll, because you either are hoping for a haunted doll or you just want to collect an old doll, or for whatever purposes, use it for magic. Old dolls are wonderful for that. If you pick one of them up and it smells like what I call cheese vomit, you've got yeah, that's a demon of a different sort. You have a doll that's filled with mold and what that is is plastics don't last forever and eventually the plastics start to emit chemicals, they start to break down and, for other reasons, the metals that are resting inside these dolls interact with those plastics that they break down and so, as that happens, certain types of mold can form and there's different types of mold and for different reasons, whether it's the interaction with the metal, whether it's the breaking down the molds feeding off the breaking down the plastic. Sometimes they look like they have a white coating over them in patches, sometimes it's dark gray, greenish, dark gray. It's very toxic. When I get one of these dolls, I have to treat it very carefully, I have to demold it and I have to treat it very carefully. I have to demold it and I have ways of doing it, but there are dolls that there are dolls that just are too far gone and it's just, it's not worth it and I've had to, unfortunately, throw those out. But I have saved a few dolls, but again, they don't last forever.
Speaker 3:If you have a, an American Girl doll, for example, some of the 90s ones are already breaking down. I haven't seen a moldy one, plastic mold anyway but they start to like, look yellow, or their vinyl starts to change color. A lot of dolls from the 70s also. You might notice your old dolls. You pull them out and they have, like their skin, stoning places is yellow. That's the plastic breaking down and distorting. Whoa, they're not meant to last forever. This girl right here I'm going to show you this is gladys. She was born in 1906 and she's made a bisque and they stopped using bisque because it was so breakable. The girls would throw it and it'd crack and break. But it turns out she's 100 and something years old and looks perfect still, yeah, whereas newer dolls that are of these plastics not so much, not lasting as long. Composition is. I have a composition doll I'll show you those are the ones that look cracked right Over time.
Speaker 3:Yes, I have one I haven't restored yet. I just got her she's composition. This is not a very good example of crazing which is the cracking. This is not a very good example of crazing which is the cracking. But what happens with them is that the material is made out of a pulped wood and glue that's mashed together and formed into the doll shape and then coated and painted. So if moisture gets inside, they start to expand, causing all those the cracks, the famous cracks that make it look like a haunted doll.
Speaker 2:Ah, okay Gotcha. The crazing is just from the wood pulp expanding with wetness. That's all it is.
Speaker 3:It's not because it's haunted, you know I always say just because a doll looks like it's haunted doesn't mean it is haunted. In fact there's so many fabulous haunted looking dolls that are probably not haunted. There was just some artist having fun trying to make a Halloween doll. But yeah, so it turns out, these older dolls out of this bisque material, if they haven't been broken they're actually the longest lasting, because eventually plastic breaks down.
Speaker 2:This has been a very enlightening and entertaining, fun conversation. Thank you so much, Heather, for coming on the show and talking about all of these not quite haunted and yet not quite not haunted situations.
Speaker 1:I have loved this conversation. I loved your workshop that you did, Heather. This has been so much fun. I'm so glad that we got to do this. I just want to make sure everybody knows where they can find you. Your website is heathergreennet. You have your articles on there. You have links to where people can purchase your book. Are there any other places that you would like people to go? Look you up?
Speaker 3:Sure, my website is a good starting point. I also a lot of my articles are found on Religion News Service and Religion Unplugged. I am a journalist as well in this area and I am on the board of Mystic South, so I'm always at Mystic South doing one thing or the other. So please come and visit us in Atlanta in July that would be super fun. And and every Wednesday at the Witches Movie, coven at 9pm Eastern. We're on YouTube and Facebook. We're live and talking about movies. We do every every type of movie horror and fantasy and everything that has magic in it. So that's another place you can find me and I'm on the socials, and those socials you can find on your website too.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Heather again, thanks so much.
Speaker 3:Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 2:Thank you and Hainted Loves. What do you think If you had a doll in your house that you knew something was coming through? What would you do with it?
Speaker 1:other than have a spooky day. Homespun haints is hosted by becky kalimnick and diana dodie and produced by homespun haints media llc. Editing and music by becky kalimnick. Show notes by diana dodie. If you have a ghost story and you'd like to be considered as a guest for this podcast, please visit our website at homespunhaintscom. Slash submit.