Fear 91 of 101: Creepy Dolls / Marionettes / Etc.

By Anna Bauer (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
Why are dolls and things like this that scary / creepy / “Oh God! Don’t let it eat my face!”-y?
1) Growing up in the era of the “Child’s Play” movies, the idea that the doll might come to life and kill me was something that I dealt with as a child that sends a shiver up my spine whenever I see one in a haunted house movie or anything else. This is also amped up in most movies that contain a haunting because the toys themselves move on their own… this adds to that little bit of claustrophobia because there is nowhere to go if the toys themselves are attacking you.
2) The sound of a toy in the night. I’m sure that you’ve all been there in your dark house lying in bed, and you hear a chuckle from down the hall… it’s a creepy effect… it’s a little unsettling. This ethereal kind of sound, the disembodied voice is awful… enough said… Well, maybe not quite enough… the fact that dolls are becoming increasingly more mechanized makes what they can do and the creep factor explode a little more (whereas the ghost houses make toys move… now, the toys that children play with are doing what ghosts and ghouls could never dream of…).
3) Now, going to the specific of the marionettes… there’s always something creepy about the boldness of the facial design of most marionettes… they are either incredibly happy or drastically depressed… there is no in-between… Also, the fact that they are being controlled by some one is a little creepy as well… yeah…

Nationalmuseet [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
I always found dolls creepy when I was a child. It’s strange, but as I’ve got older I’ve begun to warm to them. I even started making my own button eyed gothic rag dolls. A lot of people say my dolls look creepy, but I like to think of them as friends 🙂
Goth Doll
February 13, 2012 at 3:23 pm
Yeah, I still find them slightly unsettling… and probably always will…
barryr22
February 13, 2012 at 6:07 pm