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"Profane objects have an aura of their own. When you touch them, your human aura mixes with theirs, and this change attracts spirits" - Lorraine Warren
Would objects carry energy and memories of their owners? Would spirits use an inanimate object to externalize their wills? Who has never heard stories of objects that were thrown away, and moments later were in the same place they were kept before, or supposedly attacked humans for no apparent reason?
We can cite one of the articles considered the darkest and that have been in everyone's daily life: the dolls. Those babies, with mechanical eyelids and a look that invades the soul and threatens our existence; the legs and arms rigid and the heart of foam. What is interesting in this is the different perception we have of them when we grow up. One example is the trilogy of Annabelle's films, a doll possessed by an entity of evil, which causes fear, but is a blockbuster.
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Picture: Book "Haunted stuff" | Darkside
However, in this text we will approach much more than dolls. Get ready to know the book " Haunted Stuff " by Stacey Graham (2019) about several articles that have in their composition something that leads them to do horrifying things.
The North American woman has been an enthusiast and researcher of paranormal subjects for 20 years. She is the author of "The Girl's Ghost Hunting Guide" (2012) and "Zombie Tarot" (2012), as well as several short stories on the subject. And speaking of " Haunted Stuff ", still one year after its release, she is still in the top 30 of Amazon's bestseller list in the category history books and literary genre reviews.
In this last release, the author takes the reader to see with other eyes the objects, furniture and the house itself. The book tells several stories of haunted or cursed items such as dolls and demonic objects, bones, houses and furniture along with the consequences faced by their owners. In a didactic way the types of ghosts, sympathies, curses and even Graham's personal experiences are listed.
The non-fictional edition of the genre features on its cover the pieces created by the artist Dianne Hoffman and, on its pages, various illustrations and photographs made available by museums and libraries in the USA.
Picture: Stacey Graham
In case you are still not convinced if it is worth reading, we have adapted some stories to give a taste and encourage you to read this book that promises to bring answers of how and why an object becomes haunted.
The Enchanted Doll Forest
Picture: Stockvault baby doll
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Suzanne Kraus Mancuso opened her doll shop in 2012: "The Enchanted Doll Forest" in northern New York State. And it was there that dark events began to torment her life. In the beginning, they were peculiarities as objects that changed places or disappeared. However, things began to get more serious.
Mancuso began to hear his name, lamps burned and the radio turned on and off by itself several times during the day. So he decided to document everything in a diary. In some of his notes were that every morning when he arrived he found certain dolls scattered on the floor, or stacked, in exactly the same place, the center of the store, and on two occasions he found dolls without their heads. Frequently, during the workday, she was observed and was also haunted by the noise of broken glass, and laughter on her back.
In the summer of that year, Suzanne had gotten tired of dolls possessed and little boxes of songs that played without any hand of this string on them. In July, she threw some objects away and thought the haunting would stop, but it didn't. For this reason, he contacted two local paranormal teams to investigate the place, and the activity seemed to increase after the teams left. Voodoo dolls were found on the floor after being torn from the wall, and piles of dolls were increasingly frequent. In her diary of paranormal activities she listed two newly acquired dolls that cried alone while the others flew around the store.
Mancuso then moved the store to a new location. The dolls were still active, but not to the same extent. She found out that collectors of supernatural items were eager to learn more about their experiences, and paid anything to have a supernatural doll at home. Her business began to take off in the great demand for dolls, even though she was honest with her customers: the dolls with the most activities are described as supernatural and she warned them that they could embark on a turbulent experience. Today, however, Mancuso has given up on selling the haunted dolls and does not recommend anyone to try to open a similar business.
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The broken face doll: Mandy
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Mandy arrived at the Quesnel & District Museum and Archives in British Columbia in 1991. The porcelain doll from the 1920's belonged to the grandmother of the donor, who did not want her daughter to play with it, as the doll was dismantling itself and since she had received it, strange things started happening in her home, like the noise of a baby crying in the basement and windows closing and opening out of nowhere.
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With her soft body torn and filthy dress, it was no surprise to the museum staff who always received items to repair or clean. What bothered them was Mandy's face: cracks in her face that came down from her temple and went through her eye and cheeks; clearly she had not aged well, with the peeled paint and bulging eyes, which caused agony when looking.
It didn't take long for the doll to start causing problems with the staff. Office materials disappeared, the noise of footsteps echoed in the empty building and caught everyone's attention. She was blamed for the wave of disappearance of artifacts and also for some snacks that appeared in different places from where they were.
With no exhibition area in the museum ready for Mandy, the doll was placed in an improvised display at the entrance. Visitors were greeted by her unpleasant face; they had the impression that the doll's eyes followed them around the room, or they felt a sudden sadness. Some people claimed that Mandy's head and fingers were moving, and aging eyes blinked as visitors moved away from the broken face doll. Later she was transferred to another part of the museum, but not near other dolls, as staff feared she might damage them.
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Months later, when she was contacted, the donor of the little troublemaker reported that after getting rid of the doll she never heard the baby in the basement again and there were no more unexplained events.
Datasheet:
Author (a): Stacey Graham
Title: Supernatural Objects
Publisher: Darkside
Year of edition: 2019
Language: Portuguese
Number of Pages: 224
Issue: 1 (July 31, 2019)