The curious online trade of haunted dolls

Collecting haunted dolls is not a game. In fact, sellers warn potential buyers to be "careful" when purchasing an item with evil properties.

“He has to go. I can't keep her in the house anymore," read the published description of an old doll with an unfriendly face, which to top it off, was also possessed by an evil old spirit. But apparently that made her a good partner for playing Ouija, and raised her price to $99.99, plus $7.70 for shipping.

Listings of “haunted” items on eBay and Etsy aren't limited to dolls. There, stones, feathers, coins, pieces of wood that would be impregnated with the energies of the beyond are traded. You can take a look in the search engines of those online commerce platforms to review those collections, but I assure you that, after looking for a while, the section of the haunted dolls will give you goosebumps.

“This negative spirit has the ability to take over your body if he wishes. When it does you will notice, but you will not be able to control your voice or your body, "warned a text highlighted in bold:" We are not responsible for this doll once it is no longer in the possession of our team, "said the ad offering Bobby, a porcelain doll with big blue eyes and curly dark hair.

They sell the doll, not their witchcraft...

We have to be clear that there is no way to check the level of wizardry of a doll, but the reality is that the market for possessed dolls has at least 1,000 entries on eBay.

There are many stumbling blocks and misleading offers that have proliferated in digital commerce since everything that exists (and what does not) began to trade a few decades ago. So they have refined rules that establish that everything offered has to be a physical object or a tangible good. That is, eBay or Etsy agree to sell the physical doll. The appearance of extraterrestrial attributes and the effects they may cause are not included in the purchase agreement.

(VIDEO) Check out these spooky enchanted items for sale

That's why it's common to find these explanatory paragraphs in item descriptions: "As required by eBay's policy on the sale of paranormal items, this listing is for the sale of the tangible doll only, it does not include the spirit." .

Other ads go a little further to pique the curiosity of potential buyers. “Buy with caution” or “Not recommended as a toy for children”.

These types of legal notices do not prevent some dissatisfied customers from issuing negative comments about the purchase. But haunted doll vendors claim their business is legitimate and always have a good excuse to explain the item's harmlessness. A frequent explanation is that you have to have a little patience to give the evil entities time to get used to the change of environment and to manifest yourself to their new owner.

An object that can be transformed into whatever you want

But in the market for the sale of enchanted objects, a warning notice has the double function of avoiding a lawsuit and being an effective form of publicity. An antique teddy bear sold at auction for $560 after 46 bids, though auctioneers warned they would not take responsibility for blown fuses, divorces or any other problems that occur in the buyer's home.

People looking for enchanted items have a variety of motivations. Some are drawn to the world of the paranormal and want to prove their suspicions by placing a ghostly-looking doll with a terrifying history of wrongdoing in their room. Others wish to have a magical object that links them to a parallel dimension where the souls of dead people reside in order to feel the presence of a loved one who has already passed away.

And since everything in this earthly life costs money, there are people who are willing to pay between 12 and 1,000 dollars for these figures with alleged magical powers.

FugitiveKatCreations director Kathryn Blowers-McNamara told Mental Floss that her business is not as simple as it seems and that there is much more to be done than writing a harrowing description of the haunted doll.

"The evaluation is a long process that can take months" and is carried out by a team that takes notes on the product. “We start with the vibe, the energy, and our intuition and if we feel something we get out our tools,” Blowers-McNamara explained.

Among her tools are the Zahorí rods, an ancient technique that consists of stimulating the senses through simple elements, which amplify the radiation for magnetic luxuries. The pendulums are used to try to communicate with the spirits that inhabit the dolls.

The public's fascination with possessed dolls was demonstrated by the box office success of the three films screened about Annabelle, a murderous doll with a terrifying fictional story whose physical image is housed at the Warren Museum of the Occult, located in Monroe. , state of Connecticut. The box office average for each of the three films was $264 million, for worldwide ticket sales of nearly $800 million.

An investigation published by the Smithsonian indicates that dolls have been part of human culture for thousands of years and have been found among the archaeological remains of children from all over the world regardless of social status.

And because dolls are inanimate miniature people, it's easy for us to project whatever we want onto them. Just as they can be made of any material, we can also make them transform to satisfy any inner desire. This is how children do it when they pamper and pour all their tenderness into their toy babies.

Those who believe that dolls can be possessed by a spirit are sure to pick up vibes of the supernatural when they open the Ebay package. That is a plausible explanation for the existence of the lucrative and peculiar market of haunted dolls.

Sources: The New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, eBay, Etsy.