April 7, 2021 • 62 mins
According to the authors of horror stories, haunting isn't just for houses. In countless works of fiction, all sorts of objects can become to a spirit -- and, over the centuries, countless people have sworn they encountered a haunted object in real life. Today's episode asks whether an object can be haunted... and the ultimate answer may not be what you expect.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, Welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is known. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our superproducer, all
mission controlled decade. Most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
Longtime listeners, you'll recall that we have often we've often
(00:45):
touched on the subject of curses. Were often touched on
the subject of people who have interacted with things in
extraordinary ways they cannot explain. In fact, in an earlier
listener Males segment, we explored the bizarre story of an
anonymous tourists who stole an artifact from the ancient disaster
(01:07):
side of Pompeii. This tourist came back fifteen years later
and returned the object. It's not that she had some
sort of sudden pang of conscience. Instead, she believed hardcore
believed this object was cursed, that it was plaguing her
with all sorts of terrible luck that simply could not
be explained by mundane means. And I'm wondering a good
(01:31):
way for maybe a good way for us to set
off on our exploration of today's topic is to talk
about these objects that surround us in our lives. Matt Nold,
did you all ever have an object in your in
your family, or in your childhood or even the current
day that you felt was on some may be hard
(01:52):
to explain, level unlucky, and there was something weird about it,
some vibe that gave off as though you had psychometry,
never been a big fan of like ceramic clowns for example. Uh,
nothing specific, but uh you a mutual friend of all
three of our Sarah cotton Off, um, who does like
podcast ad sales stuff and we used to work with
(02:12):
years ago. Uh, she is obsessed with haunted objects, so
we should ask her. But um, we went to that
store in New York once I believe it's called gosh
came what it's called it. There was a show called
Auditorium or Oddities on Science Channel that was like about
these you know, quirky, this quirky couple that runs this
oddity shop. And we went in there with Sarah and
she immediately asked them or any of these objects haunted
(02:35):
or cursed, and they're like, no, we we don't. We
don't do that. M it's not haunted in the same
way that we're gonna be talking about today. But this
is my grandfather's wedding ring, and I've been wearing it
for quite a while, and I have to say, I
believe that it's just my knowledge that I'm wearing his
ring and makes me think about him a lot. But
I swear to you he just a his His voice
(02:59):
appears to not in an actual manifestation, but like I can,
I can hear myself thinking his thoughts way way more
now that I've been wearing this ring. Um, this is
also his stamp. I don't know if you probably can't
read that this stamp. Okay, it's nice to stamp things
with it, but yeah, I don't. I don't have anything
(03:21):
that is unlucky necessarily. I've got a story I can
tell you about this house in general and the luck
or the unluck that it has brought. But that's for
another day. Al Right, Okay, I'm writing it down. You
guys know, I keep a little had here where I
write things, and they my language, so we're going to
follow up on that I've got. I've got a couple
(03:44):
of slides. I've got a couple of I guess you
would call them unusual possessions. Uh. And it's funny too
that we call objects possessions. Don't wait. One that I
can see off hour now is one that I personally
hesitate to touch. It's a carving of mandrill from I
(04:09):
believe West Africa. It's West West African in origin. And
that is also how it came to me and why
it stays in my house, even though I don't particularly
like messing with it. I would say I respect it.
But that story is a story for a another day
as well. The point is that we all have things
(04:32):
like this, things that we imbue with some sort of meaning,
that we anthropomorphize in a degree. You know, like you
might have something that you believe or you like to
think it has a personality, even if you consider yourself
a really skeptical person. Human beings will like name their cars,
their ships and other vessels. There's even an old cultural
(04:55):
belief I believe in Japan that once an object reaches
a hundred years old, it acquires a kind of spirit
of its own and these stories of objects inhabited by
something good or bad. Uh, they occur throughout human history,
they continue in the modern day ways that may surprise
(05:17):
some of us. And not all of these objects have
the same type of allegedly supernatural aspects. In fact, some
people like the infamous Ed and Loraine Warren, will tell
you that certain objects are not just bringers of misfortune,
but their whole to something somehow sentient. So can an
(05:39):
object be haunted? By the way the weather here in
Atlanta today is perfect for this, This is stormy night weather.
Tiny cathul who says an object can definitely be haunted, well, well, no,
no matter what Fulu or any other ancient one says,
there is no scientific proof at this moment that any
object has ever been han did here are the facts? Yeah?
(06:03):
First things first, at least at the time of this recording,
there's no proof that's universally accepted that anything in history,
including objects, has been haunted. And and by proof we
mean there's no there's nothing in the world that we
know of now that everyone can point to and agree. Yes,
(06:25):
you know, there is a ghost in this toaster, and
it speaks to us through messages burned into the bread
that just hasn't happened yet, or something like that. And
that's because for something to be haunted, there would have
to be some kind of consciousness attached, right, some sort
of sentience, And we don't know very much about our
(06:46):
own conscious states. We don't even know what happens to
the thing we call consciousness when our physical hardware breaks down,
that's right, I mean, and you know it's obviously it's
research is ongoing, and it's the kind of thing that
can go deep in many directions, whether it's science or
the study of the actual hardware you speak of ben
(07:07):
the brain itself, or more into metaphysical or even spiritual
realms as to you know, is the brain just a brain?
Is is it imbued with something more like that's that's
part of some greater divine connectivity with the universe, or
some sort of spiritual deity like a soul um. So
there are billions of people across the world who might
(07:28):
believe that they in particular or a group so that
they're associated with no exactly what happens when you die,
when the brain dies, whether it's instant nothingness, you know,
that's that's what my that's what I typically picture and
it's kind of scary. UM or reincarnation seems a lot
(07:48):
more fun. Or a particular type of eternity or afterlife
that might look a certain way, or feel a certain way,
or be based around a certain set of rules. Are
speaking of rules. If you don't follow them, you might
go to the bad place, very bad place, depending on
you know, what you've done in your life on this
earth in the way you've chosen to use that equipment
(08:11):
that Ben was talking about. Um. The problem is that
among all of these folks, the scientists, the philosophers, the
spiritual leaders, you know, they all might have a strong case,
or at least they might think they do, as to
what the real truth is behind sentience and and understanding
and being. But as we all know, uh, no one
(08:33):
really knows. No one really has that definitive proof that
will shut all of those other perspectives down. There is
no right or true answer that we know of. Therefore,
a lot of this exists in the realm of belief,
as does the idea of haunting. That is correct, and
one of the primary reasons here is something that we
covered a little while back. I can't remember the exact episode,
(08:56):
but we discussed the current impossibility of measuring whatever the
actual thing is, the energy that would transfer between a consciousness,
a human or any animal or whatever into an object.
Whatever that stuff is, whether it's physical, metaphysical, or whatever,
(09:16):
we have no way of measuring that thing that's stuff yet,
if there is any stuff at all. Right, right, we
don't know what we're searching for. Necessarily, we don't know
how to define it. And and to be absolutely fair,
you know, when we're saying that no one has a
right or true answer, what we what one way to
(09:39):
look at it is the problem is that absolutely no
one has ever been able to convince everyone else that
their answer is correct. So there may be there may
well be an answer about the afterlife. Uh, and it
may be very specific and one of those many religions
or many theories that arose since the dawn of a
(10:00):
corded history, maybe in fact correct. It's just like, you know,
it's almost eight billion people trying to order a pizza,
and then you know, we can't even agree whether it
should be a pizza. There's somebody, there's like a whole
you know, group of a billion other people who say, guys,
we should we should have salad. This is not a
cheap day. That's that's kind of where we're at, and
(10:23):
that's where we have been at for a long time.
But we can't we don't know what to measure. Like
if you lose your car keys, great because that means
you know what you're looking for. We've lost we have.
We are looking for something that we cannot really define.
And yes, I think there is I think that story
about the twenty one Grahams as the weight of the
(10:46):
soul is amazing. But there are a lot of problems
if you look into it anyway. So that's one side
of it. There's another side here. There's a conflicting fact.
It is a fact, in arguably that for thousands and
thousands of years, people around the world, independent of one another,
have decided to revere, to fear, to avoid, or in
(11:09):
some cases, gather toward objects and places they believe hold
extraordinary power. A god under a mountain, a ghost haunting
the site of an ancient grave, an entity you know,
maybe anchored to a sword or a staff or a spear,
or a demon inhabiting a doll. So we're all of
(11:30):
these people, these literally millions of millions of people across
the span of human history, just collectively making it up.
That seems really unlikely. That seems incredibly unlikely. And so
because of that, it seems like we have two inarguable
facts that appear to be in opposition, no scientifically accepted
(11:52):
proof that ghosts exist, and countless examples again of millions
and millions of people believing wholehearted that they do. So
in today's episode, we're diving into the space between these
two conflicting facts. And that's what I was gonna skip it,
but you got me, You got me. It's just such
(12:14):
a convenient phrase. We're diving into this space between these
two conflicting facts, and let's see how we can respond
to this question, can an object be haunted? We'll get
into it after a word from our sponsor. Here's where
(12:38):
it gets crazy. Oddly enough, the best place to begin
here is with dolls. Did you guys like knowl you
said you've got to You've got a particular weakness for
creepy ceramic clown figurines. Those are kind of doll like.
I was more, you know, dolls for for young boys,
which we call action figures. I was very into human
(13:01):
and ninja turtles, and you know, g I Joe and
stuff like that. Um. I even had a weird like
crossover interest in my little pony growing up. I remember
that very distinctly. Uh dolls, Yeah, I mean they're really
just dolls, are just posable figurines of some sort. I
guess the idea of dolls tends to be associated with uh,
(13:23):
young girls, but that also feels a little you know,
in this day and age overly gender. I mean, dolls
are obviously for anyone, but um, they certainly can be creepy,
those porcelain ones with the very very white uh and
and expressionless faces, um, and seemingly real hair. You know,
(13:44):
gender is a construct. Dolls are for any kind of
creep who wants one. Good good point people you think,
I'm sorry, we think of people's grandmothers, though, having rooms
just overflowing with these things and just looking down upon
you from high shelves. Thankfully, my grandmother was not one
of those people. But but bless you to anyone who
(14:05):
has one of those and had to grow up around
that kind of horror. I'm just gonna posit something here.
My son is five. We've talked about him a couple
of times. He loves stuffed animals, So not quite dolls,
but similar because a lot of dollmakers, you know, especially
when we're gonna talk about in a little bit, we're
originally making a stuffed animal or stuffed animals as a product,
(14:25):
and then dolls came later. Generally not always that, that's
not always the case, but stuffed animals. You guys, I
think you've seen it before, maybe just the everybody on
this call, But my son was gifted a Mickey Mouse
doll that is like human sized. It's bigger than my son. Yeah. Yeah,
(14:47):
is that one of those gifts as a parent you're
kind of like, thanks. Well, I mean, he loved it
at the time when he first got it. He still
loves it now, calls him Big Mickey. At night when
I'm putting my son to sleep and that thing is
in the room, I am telling you, no matter what
my personal beliefs, just sitting in the corner in the
shadows and seeing its dimensions there, there is something utterly
(15:13):
creepy about it, and I don't know how it It
doesn't give my son nightmares, he says. He feels safer
knowing that it's there, you know, like I've got um
I probably had a different background from you guys, because
in my earlier years, my very early years, I did
(15:34):
have some sketchy family characters with my loved dearly. One
of them, I may have mentioned to you guys off
air before, was my great aunt nine spelled like the
spelled like the number. And she was regarded as a
practitioner of things that might be considered you know, hedge
(15:58):
magic or folk magic. And she had quite a collection
of all sorts of interesting things and artifacts. And this
was the first person I met who had dolls that
she considered dangerous dolls that were made for a purpose
(16:19):
of specific types. And this is something that is going
to be familiar with a lot of the folklorist in
the crowd today. It's also an ancient practice, and it's
practice I was not aware of at the time. But
we'll we'll get to it. So I guess in a way,
I had early experiences with dangerous dolls, and my Aunt
nine has passed on to whatever is on the other
(16:44):
side of this crazy improv exercise we call life. But
I also I think that colored my perception of dolls
in general, you know, And I would see other people
with these things. I would inevitably think like, oh, what
are they what are they doing with this one? Is
(17:04):
this like a is this like a barbie? Or is
this like a don't touch it, someone will get sick
kind of thing. Uh, we all have this place. And
I love the point about dolls versus action figures. They're
really the same thing. They're figurines, right, of different genres
or types. But yeah, we're talking about the things that
(17:26):
are commonly regarded as toys or collectors items here in
the modern age. For some of us, those are very
nostalgic relics of childhood. For others, they're irredeemably creepy. It's
no surprise that when people talk about haunted objects nowadays,
they tend to talk most often about dolls and and
(17:49):
there are a couple of pop culture reasons that are
very obvious that will get to. But one of the
most infamous haunted objects is a doll called an About.
And this comes to us from the warrants that we
mentioned at the top that we also did an episode
on I Forgot about that. Is it a two part No,
it's just a one partner. It's great, really great info
(18:11):
in the Warrens. So let's talk about him. Um, they
are paranormal investigators. They are I believe they style themselves
as demonologists. Is that true, Ben, I think demonologists Ed
Warren the or Ed Warren passed away, I believe. But um,
(18:32):
he was a demonologist and Annabelle uh first, like was
made known to them way back in nineteen seventy and
you probably know it because of the film series. But
this was a real doll that these paranoral investigators and
demonologists like encountered. There was a student nurse who contacted
them because they were already kind of known for what
(18:53):
they did. Um. She claimed that the doll was just
being weird, like, hey, I got this doll in. It's weird.
It's not just weird looking, it's being weird, it's doing stuff.
She said that, uh, a psychic told her it was
inhabited by the spirit of a dead person, a girl
(19:14):
named Annabelle, And immediately the Warrens are like, Okay, yeah,
we need to see this doll. Let's check it out.
And the legend was born, right Yeah. According to the
accounts from the Warrens, this nursing student had a roommate
and she and her roommate when they had learned from
(19:34):
a psychic that this doll was inhabited by a spirit
of a of a dead human girl. They tried to
make peace of sorts to arrive at an armistice, you know,
and respected space pebesiance to it, etcetera. But they had
no luck. The events continued, and they accelerated, and they
(19:57):
became worrisome and frightening and potentially to pay on how
you hear it described dangerous, So in desperation, the student
reaches out to the Warren's. Just like you said, Matt,
Long story short. You can hear more about it in
our previous episode. The doll Annabelle is currently contained in
(20:18):
a glass display box at the Warren's Occult Museum there
in Monroe, Connecticut. You can go look at it. It
doesn't look like the Annabelle of the movies. I would
argue it looks a little more creepy. But as you
can imagine, skeptics have some issues with the story here. Uh,
they're not They're not quite accusing. Not everybody is saying,
(20:42):
you know, these folks are con artists or anything like that.
There's a guy named Joseph Laycock wrote a fantastic article
about this at the time, it was a Texas State
University assistant professor of religious studies. He thinks the story
may have been influenced by the cultural ecology of the time,
by the zeitgeist, because you said, right, that's when when
(21:05):
the story of Annabelle again begins. According to the Warren's
something else happened a few years prior. There were other
scary doll tropes, like a great Twilight Zone episode called
Living Doll, which came out just about five years before
that Warren story. And this doesn't prove anything, but the
(21:25):
character of the mother in that episode is also named Annabelle.
So if you're really skeptical or you're kind of cynical,
do you think ed Warren found this doll and kind
of thought about the Twilight Zone and then said we'll
call it Anabelle. You know, maybe or even the if
(21:48):
it's true that this nursing student really was experiencing something weird,
maybe it was because of that Twilight Zone, the episode
that she caught. I mean, you know, who knows there
it's all in a conjecture, right, Hey, can we just
take a moment and really appreciate Nohl's hat right now,
just before we do anything else. Well, can we appreciate
the fact that this hat was gifted to me by
(22:09):
the magnanimous Ben Bolan. Uh. It says Illuminati on the bottom,
and what is this on the top. Don't trust anyone? Yes,
not haunted by the way, definitely not haunted. I do
trust some people. Definitely trust you too, mostly, But but
(22:30):
I I do like the hat and I wanted to
rocket today. So thank you Ben. Sorry for Well, we're talking.
We're talking about objects, right, That's that's another object. There's
the there's the nihilistic argument that we're all just objects,
you know, floating in space. And and really, if you
think about it, I was going to save this for later,
(22:52):
but if you think about it, you are listening from
a haunted object right now. You are as a consciousness,
as a mind, You are inhabiting a body. You are
haunting it, you are possessing it. Your body is a
haunted house just happens to be growing all the time.
(23:13):
So so so I love that John Mayer song Your
body is a haunted house. Yeah, I have to go
and go. It's better than the temple one. Uh. This
this brings us to the idea of haunted dolls in
the modern day, so excellent horror franchise, The Conjuring. They
(23:33):
get ahold of this story. It's been in, it's been
around before you know. They're like the spooky docuseries unsolved
mysteries type investigations, but the Conjuring takes it to the
world of fiction, or people might argue even further into
the world of fiction. And Annabel goes from being an
oddity and a small Connecticut museum to a global phenomenon,
(23:55):
the subject of three different films, and it cements its
status as the world's most famous haunted doll, if not
most famous haunted object. But it's not alone. There is
another ext There actually multiple examples of allegedly haunted dolls. Specifically,
(24:16):
and uh, we found one that you might not have
heard of unless this was already very much your bag
of of badgers, your bag of stuffed badgers, your stuffed
bag of stuffed badgers, anyway you would. You might be
surprised to hear of another doll that came to prominence
around the same time, whose name is simply Robert full name,
(24:37):
Robert the Doll. You just want to go ahead and
apologize to Robert before we even start talking about him. Um,
just Robert, We're sorry. We were just talking about you
for the purposes of this show. Yeah, you've done a
lot for the podcast, Robert. We just feel like this
is a story we need to tell. In full disclosure,
Robert may or may not be on the board of
(24:58):
Illumination Global Unlimited, so we want you to know that
we're doing our best to be fully transparent and did
not exhibit a conflict of interest. Um, Robert's a real
physical doll. And you guys know how I hate uh
all right, I just I don't respect clowning people for
(25:19):
physical features or anything like that. I guess we can
get away with it, maybe with Robert. Can we see
can we say it? Can we just say the quiet
part out loud? He is creepy looking? Yeah, he really
is creepy looking. Um. You can go online to a
lot of places and see actual images of Robert first
and foremost, Robert the doll dot Org. Just have to
(25:41):
throw that out there. I love love that you are
l exists. That is what he looks. He's like a
creepy sailor. He looks like kind of like a doll.
Where it's like, show me where the bad man touched
you kind of doll. Um also like like like maybe
like a dummy he would use to do like CPR
practice or something like that. But very uncanny, these weird
(26:03):
segments of fabric that are joined together to make the
different sections of his face. That seems very Hannibal lecter e.
That's see, it's I don't know, that's I mean, obviously
no offense. Robert h no offense. So let's talk about Robert.
Robert was let's say, the possession of it's a doll,
it's a thing. So it was owned by Robert Eugene
(26:27):
Auto as a person. I propose we call Robert Eugene
Auto Gene for the purpose of this story, just to
keep it, keep it clear fully, Gene was Roberts caretaker.
Let's say. Um, and you can read a lot of
different stories, origin stories, some that claim to be original,
(26:50):
some that seem to be sort of fan fiction. Um,
you can read it just a ton of different versions
of Robert's story. But let's let's just talk about the
official one that you can find there on that website
you just mentioned. Nor. Yes, it was created as a
one of a kind creepy doll by the Steve Company.
I'm thinking, as Steve might be stife, I'm gonna go
(27:12):
Steve Company of Germany near the turn of the century.
Um it, I don't want to hear ta rary. He
is forty inches tall and stuffed with wood wool, which
is known as excelsior, which I am tickled by because
excelsior is also a term that journalists would maybe used
(27:32):
to define something of excellent quality, maximum luxury, and it
was a Marvel Comics legend, stan Lee's personal life motto
excelsior with the exclamation market them. But it's also wood
wool shavings. It's basically it's like wood sawdusty type shavings
that you can use to stuff something with. So probably
already has a bit of a you know, shed like
(27:55):
smell to it. And yes, he is in fact dressed
like a sailor in a little stay other suit. And
at one point he was painted kind of like a
court jester. Um. But but all that stuff is worn
off over the years. Um. And he is quite large, right, Yes,
yeah he's Ah, he's a big mickey all his own.
(28:18):
So the the official story is that, uh, the Auto
family was a pretty prominent family in Key West Florida,
and Otto's grandfather was on a trip to Germany in
nineteen o four. This is where he is believed to
have picked up Robert as a gift for his grandson.
(28:41):
The story is as as Matt said, a little murky
at this point, because the legends get a little bit juicier.
You'll see one that claims a young woman of quote
Bahamian descent gave Otto this doll, either as a gift
or as a curse, kind of a poison apple for
some unspecified slight. And whatever the case, and whether the
(29:04):
legend or the official story, the truth of the matter
is that Auto becomes incredibly enamored of and attached to
this doll. He names it after himself, Robert the Doll.
Something interesting happens psychologically. He builds, or he gets his
folks to build a boy's home, a boy's room in
(29:26):
the attic and the family attic just for Robert, you know,
complete with toys, chairs, a bed, the whole nine. And
then he started blaming anything wrong that he did on
this doll. So someone would say, hey, did you track
in mud on the floor or sand or something like that,
and he would say that wasn't me. That was Robert,
(29:49):
and they would say, oh, okay, Jean, but this is
starting to get a little weird, you know, as this
your imaginary friend, et cetera. They probably didn't think about
it at the time, but I know a lot of
our fellow conspiracy realist in the audience are wondering, was
this boy making a tulpa a thought form interesting yeah,
or what was he dealing with something, you know, mental
(30:12):
health like in his life that some kind of disassociation
or some kind of you know, application of his own
actions onto this thing as a Anyway, I'm not a
psychologist who knows what was going on inside Jean and
or Robert, but it's a it's definitely strange because it
wasn't just a childhood thing, right, This relationship between Robert
(30:36):
the Man and Robert the Doll continued. Yes, Jean became
a pretty well known regional artist who is widely considered
an eccentric. The partnership between Robert the Guy and Robert
the Doll continued well into adulthood. Um, that's an interesting
point about disassociation too. We would have to ask where
(30:59):
it came from. Could there have been some sort of
traumatic situation occurring if so, that's lost to history. Eventually,
Robert the Man, Robert Eginato, passes away. His wife, who
survives him, has always hated this thing, you know what
I mean. She's she's of the mind that you know,
(31:19):
call her conservative, but she's thinking a marriage is between
two people, not two people in a doll. Anyhow, as
soon as he passes away, she orders that this doll
be locked up in a cedar chest and hidden in
the attic, never touched again. She passes away, and years
(31:41):
and years after her death, this doll Robert is rediscovered.
And now if you wish, you can visit Robert at
the East Martello Museum. Oh, we should mention it wasn't
just a situation of Gene. Robert the Man be weird
it around the doll. Other people said the doll would
(32:04):
do weird stuff, like it would move, it would exhibit
facial expressions. Maybe it would change. It would change, Uh,
it would People would hear voices around it, things like that.
And now if you wish you can visit Robert. He
still has his stuffed teddy bear too, because he had
(32:24):
his own toys. Remember, Oh, dude, I forgot about that.
That was that was the whole thing. If you if
you check out Robert at the museum right now, he's
holding a doll himself, So it is uh, I don't know, man,
I wonder if that Teddy Bear then becomes the next
(32:44):
thing somehow infected or it's a host. But this it's
strange because if you look at the history of this
of this guy, it came into the public eye kind
of around the same time as Annabelle or its discovery,
which means it was also a few years after that's
(33:05):
Twilight Zone episode. Just Teddy Rucks been figure into all this,
that's my big question. My Teddy Rucks been asked me
not to include them in this episode. Fair enough, my
Teddy Rocks, but also has a bit of a hold
over me, so we'll just change the subject. Still my
absolute favorite thing as a kid. When did you put
the other tapes in like that many tapes? Yeah? But
(33:30):
did you put in like your Mega death tapes? Oh? Yeah,
well no, it was um guy with Michael W. Smith.
Well that's not evil at all. Takes on a whole
different feel when you put in like some satan music.
Did you hear that? Holy cal al right? When I
(33:51):
said satan music, there's this huge thunderclap. It's been great.
I don't know if you guys can hear it on
my end, but it's still going. It's been going. That
was the big one, the first big one I've heard
in this recording, and you just right after you said that.
So we know that when people go to visit Robert
at this museum, they some some people will still report
(34:14):
that they've experienced something they can explain, and a lot
of people right to the doll after visiting him, isn't
that correct? That's right. Apology letters are often written to
Robert for visiting him without his permission. If you go
to many YouTube videos about Robert the Doll, you will
see in the comments section, post after after post after
(34:35):
post of people saying, hey, sorry, Robert, just we want
to learn about your story. Didn't mean to disturb you
or you know, sorry for watching or learning about you
without your permissions. One joking about that earlier, I for one,
would like to extend a heartfelt apology to Robert for
all the terrible things I said earlier in the podcast.
So please for my humblest apologies, Robert, and please please
(34:57):
forgive me. Forgive me, Robert. I hope you're doing well.
I feel no need to apologize to you. Um I
do wish you the best, but I will call that
you seem to be treated better than a lot of
human beings these days. Throwing shade at Robert. I'm so
(35:17):
glad that we have an image like looking behind you, Ben,
so when Robert just kind of creeps up behind your shoulder,
we'll be able to give you just a split second warning.
That's not a ding That's not a ding on Robert.
That's a ding on the human species treat each other better,
you know what I mean? Who else should you be
apologizing to folks anyway? That's anyway anyway. Those are the circumstances.
(35:42):
We just thought that's an interesting story because it shows
that there's not just one example of this. In fact,
there are multiple other examples. There's Letter the Doll in Australia,
there's Okiku in Japan. The list goes on and on.
So we have these caces of things that pre date Annabel,
(36:04):
the most famous haunted doll, by a bit. But the
truth of the matter is that the story goes much
much deeper. You see, haunted dolls, or some version of them,
date back into antiquity. What are we talking about. We'll
tell you afterward from our sponsors. We're back and we're
(36:31):
going back in time. We're going far far earlier than
the turn of the twentie century. We're going far far
past the creation of the US. We're looking at early civilization,
the earliest predecessors of things like Annabelle and Robert. We're effigies.
There was something called poppets p O p p e
(36:54):
t s and folklore. These are dolls that are made
to represent a specific person for a specific reason. Uh,
and they were created by all sorts of early civilizations. Yeah,
it wasn't there a thing about poppets in the Crucible
about that being sort of a witchy item, a puppet,
And if I'm not mistaken, it's something that you hear
kind of stylized, which is say, oh, my poppets, my
(37:17):
little poppet, referring to children they're about to eat or something.
But yeah, no, I'm pretty sure that was definitely a
cursed object or it was in our our item in
the Crucible that maybe was tied back to the bewitching
of of many of these children in them in the village. Yeah, yeah,
you're correct. There's a cousin to the poppet that we're
going to talk about. That's basically the thing that you
(37:38):
probably have in your mind even while we're talking about them,
if you are not remembering the crucible stuff. But but
these were made all over the place. We're talking rome
Um in Africa, West Africa and Egypt. These these puppets
were used or these specific types of effigies um and
a lot of times it wasn't necessarily for a bad thing.
(37:58):
That's what's kind of cool about these. Sometimes it was
almost like us, like a sin eater, spirit eater kind
of thing, where the poppet could help somebody, like you
could remove a curse from somebody by using one of
these things. You could heal somebody perhaps by using one
of these things. And if it was made of, you know,
(38:19):
a specific human, specific person. But the other thing is,
and this is where the kind of cousin to it
comes in. You could perhaps make one of a person
and then curse the doll, and then it would imbue
that curse into the actual person that it represented, right,
break the legs, put nails into the eyes, things things
(38:41):
of that nature. That's correct. Versions of this practice continue
in the modern day, it's not you know, as widespread
and the right you hear that or is it? Yeah,
this is the perfect weather to record this. So versions
of it do continue, they're probably just not as widespread. Uh,
(39:04):
we do at this point we want to make an
important statement about so called voodoo dolls, and that is
the cousin that I was referring to. Got it, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You can find them in novelty stores. There's even a
couple of like instructible or wicki how articles about how
to make your own legit ones. Uh. The term voodoo
(39:28):
doll usually describes several different kinds of effigy creation and
these different cultures across the world. But to be absolutely clear,
these kinds of things don't really have a prominent place
in Haitian voodoo or Louisiana voodoo, which are two distinct
yet related actual religions. So the a lot of the
(39:52):
conflation of um, these sorts of effigies with the practices
of that we would term loosely voodoo, uh, come about
from racism in the past. This this is more this
was probably more common like the people practicing that kind
of stuff in the crucible or being accused of doing so.
They're being accused of having a lineage dating back to
(40:15):
European uh, pre Christian or pagan practices. It's it's just
it's a very important distinction. Dolls are not the only
thing that has been alleged to be haunted. They steal
the spotlight today, but let's remember fiction is full of
things like haunted cars, a love of Stephen King's, haunted boxes,
(40:36):
haunted houses, haunted shoes, etcetera. It turns out there is
an entire cottage industry of haunted objects out there today.
And thanks to the great work by a New York
Times journalist, Alicia De Santis, uh, you can take a
closer look at this subculture that is selling haunted items
(41:00):
on eBay, and they want to give you an opportunity
to buy one. Uh spoiler. Most of them are dolls,
but there's other stuff too there. I'll give you an
example right here. I am looking at an active item
for sale right now. It is titled Haunted Active Dolls
(41:22):
Paranormal Spirit of Vanessa, and it is a It looks
like an American girl doll, maybe a little maybe even
a little better made. I don't know the craftsmanship on
American Girl Dolls is very high. But this looks pretty incredible.
The blue eyes are haunting. Here we go. Uh, I
(41:44):
found one that I was I was reading earlier. Just
I just felt the vibe of this gothic cursed item
devil Satan, legia board, baffroom, that paranormal psychic tarot. That
is a winning combination there, my friend on itemte watchers
(42:05):
right now. Yeah, it's all one night. It's only fifty
five bucks o bio or best offer. So for that
in fourteen dollars shipping, you could get all those keywords
together today. That's like a cursed tur ducan is. Yeah,
that's say it cursed your ducket. Uh, dude, I just
you guys, I'm looking at I don't know what this is.
(42:26):
It's an authentic bo that's a that's a gremlin or
goblin from the Jewish faith. I'm not mistaken. You are correct,
a malevolent spirit that can enter and possess the body
of a living person unless they're exercise. And uh, there's
(42:47):
an idea that has something in common with the myths
about jen that they could be restrained in a specific
type of container under the correct type of ritual. Well,
there are a lot of these for sale on eBay.
Can you can you imagine like what it must be
like on like the dark web, that's where the real
stuff is. Yeah, so you can you can go and
(43:12):
see this stuff yourself right now. And if you peruse
e Bay like Noel, Matt and I are doing, you'll
find everything from haunted jewelry too, haunted ups boxes for
some reason, feathers, pieces of frankly ordinary looking wood. But
the sentis has uh has something to note about this.
(43:34):
I like the way she put it. She said that
they might be said not to be haunted so much
as enchanted for specific reasons for luck, for fortune. Uh
that you have to you have to have a positive environment,
you have to have a good attitude when you're handling
this stuff, and that not all good luck applies the same.
So there are notes in these things. Are these biddings
(43:56):
where they'll say things like this chip is for money
luck only, not general good fortune or finding love, which
are different spells. And one thing that I one thing
I enjoyed was the disclaimers, because you know, when you
buy a lot of stuff online, you will see the
fine print and the notices, Like someone will say Okay, hey,
(44:20):
this is PS five or whatever, but it ships without
the box. Or I've got this, um, I've got this
g I Joe, but it doesn't have the little backpack.
They are there are things like this on the paranormal listings,
and they say stuff like, quote as required per Ebase
policy on the sale of paranormal items. This is for
(44:41):
the sale of the tangible item only, no promise of
a spirit attached. Sorry, sorry, it's yeah, this is just
the box to be cleared. Yeah. The the complaints can
give you a chuckle to because there are people who
are you know, seem to be genuinely concerned that shipping
(45:05):
this item may disassociate it from the spirit or they
feel like they ordered something believing it to be paranormal
or inhabited by something and they're just not catching any
any Jeff Goldblue Mask vibes off of it, so they
think that it's um. Now, the typical there is a
typical response to from the sellers. They say, it takes time.
(45:27):
You have to spend time with it, you have to
be familiar with it so that feels comfortable enough, you know,
to speak with you. You know what we should do
been we should build a panopticon and then in every
cell put one of these haunted objects and lock it
in there, and then you know, just observe them with
cameras and other sensors for I don't know, twenty years
(45:49):
something like that. Yeah, I think we could. We could
probably work a work something like that out in the
show budget. Uh, folks, me volunteers, let us know what
your favorite haunted objects are that could occupy our panopticon.
Extra points for a big Mickey esque figure, yeah, or
a like a fridge that you know survived an earthquake
(46:11):
or something, or a building collapse and then if you
if you there is a person actively looking at it,
it does something. We're like, Uh, a telephone that's that
is detached but still speaks to forces beyond our dimension. Yeah,
that would be amazing. Or a microwave, just like a
(46:33):
badass crazy microwave. I don't know it just can't you know.
It's like the Wolverine of the crew. I don't know. Um,
the brave little toaster was haunted, Ben, Do you think
he was somehow embodied by some sort of malevol a spear.
I mean, I know he was brave and super cute,
but toasts aren't supposed to hop around like that and
(46:56):
go exploring, going on adventures. Even the Ghostbusters Toaster just
kind of jumped around a little. Yeah, I don't know,
I would be all four haunted kitchen appliances. As a
matter of fact, that's gonna kind of come into play,
because we have a twist for you at the end
of this, folks. But here we have it as it stands.
(47:18):
Ancient folklore spiritual practices live on co modified to a
degree due to the nature of the society in which
we live. Some people just doubtlessly enjoy the stories. I mean,
it's cool, you know, like, hey, I got this haunted
according on eBay, that's a true story of my part.
It was advertised as haunted, and I was like, the
(47:39):
price is right. Uh if I haunted they meant some
of the reeds were broken, then yes, I guess it
is haunted. But but other people, you know, really enjoy
the mythology of these things. And then some people truly
do believe there's something inexplicable and supernatural a foot. We
can say there's psychology you behind it, definitely right, there's
(48:01):
this urgent need to anthropomorphize everything because it's our way
of explaining the familiarity or discomfort we feel around certain objects.
Like almost everybody has a lucky insert here, right, this
is my lucky hat. These are these are my this
is my lucky shirt kind of thing, right, mostly underwear,
(48:24):
but yeah, mostly underwear. Yeah, this is these are my
These are my business under ruse. These are my going
out under ruse. These are my business Tommy John's of
two Flight of the Concords. Uh. It makes sense then, though,
doesn't it, Guys that dolls would be so prominent in
(48:46):
this kind of folklore because they already looked just enough,
like for sure, I I wonder, I wonder if you
guys are doing this more recently actually anthropomorphy rising stuff
in your house or or any of you guys doing
that right now? I always have the one more ifies
the backs of trucks that they have faces on them.
(49:08):
Let's see, like, yeah, and cars are designed in the
in the front end at least a look kind of
like face. Like you could just have one big headlight
that goes across. You could have three, you could have
eight and have like a spider looking car, but no
two and a grill, little mouth, little face as their
(49:30):
hurdles towards you at eight five plus miles an hour
and you have just enough time to go. Ah, I'm wondering.
I'm wondering all about the backs of truck backs of trucks. Yeah,
like a semi semi you sort of have like you know,
the seam going down the back of it is like
the bridge of the nose, and then like the little
(49:51):
guardrail is sort of the nose. And sometimes it's like
mud flaps are like the teeth kind of you know
what I mean. Okay, I see it. So are the
are the doors the loading doors for the trailer they
like big eyes or they more like the cheek area.
It depends. It depends on where the lights are attached
and whether they're in the's any signage or anything that
adds to the illusion. But yeah, they certainly can be
(50:13):
ben they can be cheeks. Um. I'm having a hard
time explaining it. Something you just have to see for yourself.
But be on the lookout next time you're stuck behind
a semi. Just look for the face, LORI, for any
anyone LORI. Indeed. Uh. One of the last thing for
me is even those little hooks you used to hang
coats on. They look like drunken octopuses that are trying
(50:33):
to put their dukes up to fight with you. M
I saw it. It's something they're reading about that they
can't unsee it. It's like, especially when they're screwed in
with two screws and they're offset a little bit, so
it's like one of them is kind of like a
little bit little it's a drunk Yeah, yeah, it's trunk
ard octopus. But we all have things like this. There's
(50:54):
so many things that you have probably encountered in your
life where you thought that looks like a ace, that
looks like a figure, a humanoid figure, And that's because
your brain has been evolved to see those sorts of patterns. So,
like I'll admit, during this pandemic, as you said, Matt,
we all kind of because we were in a smaller
(51:17):
environment most of the time, we may have accelerated some
of this anthropomorphization. About eight months in, you know, I
looked around. I realized all this in my kitchen has
a personality. Now there's the good bowl, the trustworthy one,
you know what I mean. There's there's there's the fork,
(51:39):
there's kind of bold, it has panash and then there's
that one spoon. You can't trust it. There's that one spoon.
It's the Judas spoon. And that's like, clearly, that's just psychology.
Maybe that's just the force of boredom and a bottle.
We're all just terribly damaged by all of this. But
(52:00):
it's okay. I think it's gonna stay with us. I
think no one is still going to be seeing truck faces.
I think all our listeners are gonna still see weird
things and like vacuums or trash can lids that open
up like mouths, and uh yeah, I don't trust that spoon,
and I know it knows what it did. So for now,
(52:20):
the answer to Canton object be haunted seems to be
primarily something like, yes, at least it can be haunted
by the human need to explain the inexplicable and to
create personalities as a way of defining our own self
perceived relationships with things. And yes, of course copy If
(52:42):
science achieves a breakthrough improves that non physical events can
indeed leave impact on physical objects, this changes everything. This
changes absolutely everything. We'll have to redo this episode until then.
Right now, as as much of a bummer as it is,
to say it. There is no proof, universally accepted proof
(53:02):
of genuinely haunted objects. But there is one last twist,
something we wanted to save until the end. In the
very near future, we may have haunted objects. Fellow conspiracy realists,
We may very well build our own ghost. Uh. Yes,
(53:24):
we may build ourselves into ghosts or build a ghost
out of some I think it will be some very
very smart person that we want to keep around to
be like, no, don't go. We we we need you still.
We need to know what we need to do next. Um,
so you know, Mark Zuckerberg or somebody anyway, But no,
(53:48):
it's it's so true because we've talked about this before.
In our attempts to achieve immortality in some way or another,
we are using computer simulations, attempts at computer simulation and
very very very fast computers with tons of memory to
be able to simulate a person or a consciousness. And
(54:11):
we've we've been attempting to do this and we may
perfect it. Yeah, which is terrifying. Should be terrified. If
you're if you're more excited than you than terrified, then congratulations.
Kind of like me and we both have a lot
of stuff we should work on. In that case, Yeah, Matt,
you're on the money. The first truly haunted object on
the way is probably not a dusty stuffed animal. It's
(54:36):
probably not some cursed spear from an ancient war. Will
instead be the result of something called whole brain emulation
or w b E, the idea of uploading the entirety
of human brain, modeling it thoughts, memories, feelings, personalities, putting
it on a hard drive, putting it in the cloud.
(54:57):
This is a possibility. There are now like conceptually we
can understand, we we can understand how it would be done.
We can see the horizon where this occurs. We have
a lot of technological hurdles there, we have a lot
of ethical hurdles that we haven't considered yet. The main,
(55:17):
the main obstacle right now, ship of thesis aside, is
that first we have to manage to achieve something called
the connect dome, just like connect O m E. A
complete map of the human brain. Uh. We have been
able to do one complete map of one creature. It's
(55:41):
a nematode, so we know it can be done in theory.
But a nematode has about three neurads. Human brain has
about eight six billion, so we can't. We don't know
how to map. We just need a couple of thousand
more years and we'll be there. We'll be good. Well,
we'd also want to map a living human brain, right
ethics socide. Would it be easier to map a living
(56:06):
human brain if you didn't have to worry about what
happened to that brain? Yeah, I know it gets sticky
really quickly. And I was gonna say, I'm wondering if
there's some kind of because obviously it's our inability to
see into the brain, deep into the brain enough with
enough resolution to be able to pick out those, you know,
(56:29):
each neural pathway, because then you could definitely get a
pretty cool image of brains just by scanning them. But
it's not the same thing as looking at, like you said,
all of the neurons, right, and we uh, you know,
the tools we have, things like m R I and
so on. It's exactly as you described. There's just not
(56:49):
the level of sophistication we need here. But if someone
can map a brain and all its interconnections, the next
step would be trying to make an emulation of it
that could run, you know, run the copy of Paul
Mission Control decond creating something that will call a substrate
independent mind, or to be cut about it, a sim
(57:14):
this sim could exist, then it would inherently be conscious,
even if we don't understand what consciousness is for us.
It would be literally a ghost in the machine. For now,
this is hypothetical. For now, this is hypothetical, but the
technology and the research are continuing at a breakneck pace.
I think it's very optimistic that that you say, the
(57:38):
first immortal, the first ghost, first thing to haunt an
object like this, might be one of the world's smartest people.
I intended to say, I think it would be one
of the world's wealthiest people who was terrified of dying.
What do you guys think about that? I think my
example would hold true for probably both of those. Yeah, yeah,
(58:00):
did nail it on that one. Then that's exactly I
can't remember which season of West World it is, but
that's exactly one of the main plot points in one
of the HBO's West World seasons where it's essentially ghosts
in the machine. It's it's physical, well, it's programs that
(58:20):
are software built into hardware that then the software gets
transferred as a ghost into a server where now they
only exists exist virtually, but it's the full consciousness of
that of those at one point physical beings. Wow, that's interesting,
like San Junipero. Right, Uh, this there, there's a reason
(58:46):
that fiction centers on this kind of stuff and orbits,
these sort of concepts, you know, science fiction in particulars.
The genre is often prescient and in one way or another.
So don't be surprised if, uh, within your lifetimes, humanity
finally has the haunted dolls it has loved and feared
(59:08):
since the dawn of recorded time. They may just end
up being computers. At one of those ghosts one day
might be you. So what do you think, folks, have
you had any experience with mysterious or cursed objects? Let
us know where what objects appeared at, personalities and faces
for you, that's that's a very interesting question to write.
(59:30):
Oh and if you if you have those things, like,
I want to see pictures of the thing from your
point of view, I definitely want to see that. I'll
take a picture of the container that holds all my
dog food that has a giant flap on it, and
it's exactly how you described it, Ben. It totally talks
and yeah, it's it's pretty amazing. Does it have its
(59:52):
own favorite dog food? Oh? Yeah, it gets so upset
if I give it the grain free stuff because it's like,
you know, this is bad for these dogs, and I'm like, god, man,
it's talking trash to you. It's like, oh, oh, Frederick
came to play today. Well guess what, buddy, no games.
I thought green free dog food was good for my dogs.
(01:00:13):
I thought that's how it worked, but apparently it's not.
So sorry, and send us, yes, send us your favorite
pictures of things that appear to have faces. Bonus points
if they are trucks, automobiles, uh, send us to your
classics and let us let us know seriously what you
think about what we've touched on here. And if you
(01:00:34):
believe that you have found a genuinely haunted object or
you have witnessed one, of course we want to hear
about it. We try to make it easy to find
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On Twitter, where were conspiracy stuff or conspiracy Stuff show?
On Instagram, you can also join our Facebook group Here's
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(01:00:55):
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(01:01:16):
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(01:01:38):
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(01:01:59):
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
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production of I Heart Radio. Hello, Welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is known. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our superproducer, all
mission controlled decade. Most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
Longtime listeners, you'll recall that we have often we've often
(00:45):
touched on the subject of curses. Were often touched on
the subject of people who have interacted with things in
extraordinary ways they cannot explain. In fact, in an earlier
listener Males segment, we explored the bizarre story of an
anonymous tourists who stole an artifact from the ancient disaster
(01:07):
side of Pompeii. This tourist came back fifteen years later
and returned the object. It's not that she had some
sort of sudden pang of conscience. Instead, she believed hardcore
believed this object was cursed, that it was plaguing her
with all sorts of terrible luck that simply could not
be explained by mundane means. And I'm wondering a good
(01:31):
way for maybe a good way for us to set
off on our exploration of today's topic is to talk
about these objects that surround us in our lives. Matt Nold,
did you all ever have an object in your in
your family, or in your childhood or even the current
day that you felt was on some may be hard
(01:52):
to explain, level unlucky, and there was something weird about it,
some vibe that gave off as though you had psychometry,
never been a big fan of like ceramic clowns for example. Uh,
nothing specific, but uh you a mutual friend of all
three of our Sarah cotton Off, um, who does like
podcast ad sales stuff and we used to work with
(02:12):
years ago. Uh, she is obsessed with haunted objects, so
we should ask her. But um, we went to that
store in New York once I believe it's called gosh
came what it's called it. There was a show called
Auditorium or Oddities on Science Channel that was like about
these you know, quirky, this quirky couple that runs this
oddity shop. And we went in there with Sarah and
she immediately asked them or any of these objects haunted
(02:35):
or cursed, and they're like, no, we we don't. We
don't do that. M it's not haunted in the same
way that we're gonna be talking about today. But this
is my grandfather's wedding ring, and I've been wearing it
for quite a while, and I have to say, I
believe that it's just my knowledge that I'm wearing his
ring and makes me think about him a lot. But
I swear to you he just a his His voice
(02:59):
appears to not in an actual manifestation, but like I can,
I can hear myself thinking his thoughts way way more
now that I've been wearing this ring. Um, this is
also his stamp. I don't know if you probably can't
read that this stamp. Okay, it's nice to stamp things
with it, but yeah, I don't. I don't have anything
(03:21):
that is unlucky necessarily. I've got a story I can
tell you about this house in general and the luck
or the unluck that it has brought. But that's for
another day. Al Right, Okay, I'm writing it down. You
guys know, I keep a little had here where I
write things, and they my language, so we're going to
follow up on that I've got. I've got a couple
(03:44):
of slides. I've got a couple of I guess you
would call them unusual possessions. Uh. And it's funny too
that we call objects possessions. Don't wait. One that I
can see off hour now is one that I personally
hesitate to touch. It's a carving of mandrill from I
(04:09):
believe West Africa. It's West West African in origin. And
that is also how it came to me and why
it stays in my house, even though I don't particularly
like messing with it. I would say I respect it.
But that story is a story for a another day
as well. The point is that we all have things
(04:32):
like this, things that we imbue with some sort of meaning,
that we anthropomorphize in a degree. You know, like you
might have something that you believe or you like to
think it has a personality, even if you consider yourself
a really skeptical person. Human beings will like name their cars,
their ships and other vessels. There's even an old cultural
(04:55):
belief I believe in Japan that once an object reaches
a hundred years old, it acquires a kind of spirit
of its own and these stories of objects inhabited by
something good or bad. Uh, they occur throughout human history,
they continue in the modern day ways that may surprise
(05:17):
some of us. And not all of these objects have
the same type of allegedly supernatural aspects. In fact, some
people like the infamous Ed and Loraine Warren, will tell
you that certain objects are not just bringers of misfortune,
but their whole to something somehow sentient. So can an
(05:39):
object be haunted? By the way the weather here in
Atlanta today is perfect for this, This is stormy night weather.
Tiny cathul who says an object can definitely be haunted, well, well, no,
no matter what Fulu or any other ancient one says,
there is no scientific proof at this moment that any
object has ever been han did here are the facts? Yeah?
(06:03):
First things first, at least at the time of this recording,
there's no proof that's universally accepted that anything in history,
including objects, has been haunted. And and by proof we
mean there's no there's nothing in the world that we
know of now that everyone can point to and agree. Yes,
(06:25):
you know, there is a ghost in this toaster, and
it speaks to us through messages burned into the bread
that just hasn't happened yet, or something like that. And
that's because for something to be haunted, there would have
to be some kind of consciousness attached, right, some sort
of sentience, And we don't know very much about our
(06:46):
own conscious states. We don't even know what happens to
the thing we call consciousness when our physical hardware breaks down,
that's right, I mean, and you know it's obviously it's
research is ongoing, and it's the kind of thing that
can go deep in many directions, whether it's science or
the study of the actual hardware you speak of ben
(07:07):
the brain itself, or more into metaphysical or even spiritual
realms as to you know, is the brain just a brain?
Is is it imbued with something more like that's that's
part of some greater divine connectivity with the universe, or
some sort of spiritual deity like a soul um. So
there are billions of people across the world who might
(07:28):
believe that they in particular or a group so that
they're associated with no exactly what happens when you die,
when the brain dies, whether it's instant nothingness, you know,
that's that's what my that's what I typically picture and
it's kind of scary. UM or reincarnation seems a lot
(07:48):
more fun. Or a particular type of eternity or afterlife
that might look a certain way, or feel a certain way,
or be based around a certain set of rules. Are
speaking of rules. If you don't follow them, you might
go to the bad place, very bad place, depending on
you know, what you've done in your life on this
earth in the way you've chosen to use that equipment
(08:11):
that Ben was talking about. Um. The problem is that
among all of these folks, the scientists, the philosophers, the
spiritual leaders, you know, they all might have a strong case,
or at least they might think they do, as to
what the real truth is behind sentience and and understanding
and being. But as we all know, uh, no one
(08:33):
really knows. No one really has that definitive proof that
will shut all of those other perspectives down. There is
no right or true answer that we know of. Therefore,
a lot of this exists in the realm of belief,
as does the idea of haunting. That is correct, and
one of the primary reasons here is something that we
covered a little while back. I can't remember the exact episode,
(08:56):
but we discussed the current impossibility of measuring whatever the
actual thing is, the energy that would transfer between a consciousness,
a human or any animal or whatever into an object.
Whatever that stuff is, whether it's physical, metaphysical, or whatever,
(09:16):
we have no way of measuring that thing that's stuff yet,
if there is any stuff at all. Right, right, we
don't know what we're searching for. Necessarily, we don't know
how to define it. And and to be absolutely fair,
you know, when we're saying that no one has a
right or true answer, what we what one way to
(09:39):
look at it is the problem is that absolutely no
one has ever been able to convince everyone else that
their answer is correct. So there may be there may
well be an answer about the afterlife. Uh, and it
may be very specific and one of those many religions
or many theories that arose since the dawn of a
(10:00):
corded history, maybe in fact correct. It's just like, you know,
it's almost eight billion people trying to order a pizza,
and then you know, we can't even agree whether it
should be a pizza. There's somebody, there's like a whole
you know, group of a billion other people who say, guys,
we should we should have salad. This is not a
cheap day. That's that's kind of where we're at, and
(10:23):
that's where we have been at for a long time.
But we can't we don't know what to measure. Like
if you lose your car keys, great because that means
you know what you're looking for. We've lost we have.
We are looking for something that we cannot really define.
And yes, I think there is I think that story
about the twenty one Grahams as the weight of the
(10:46):
soul is amazing. But there are a lot of problems
if you look into it anyway. So that's one side
of it. There's another side here. There's a conflicting fact.
It is a fact, in arguably that for thousands and
thousands of years, people around the world, independent of one another,
have decided to revere, to fear, to avoid, or in
(11:09):
some cases, gather toward objects and places they believe hold
extraordinary power. A god under a mountain, a ghost haunting
the site of an ancient grave, an entity you know,
maybe anchored to a sword or a staff or a spear,
or a demon inhabiting a doll. So we're all of
(11:30):
these people, these literally millions of millions of people across
the span of human history, just collectively making it up.
That seems really unlikely. That seems incredibly unlikely. And so
because of that, it seems like we have two inarguable
facts that appear to be in opposition, no scientifically accepted
(11:52):
proof that ghosts exist, and countless examples again of millions
and millions of people believing wholehearted that they do. So
in today's episode, we're diving into the space between these
two conflicting facts. And that's what I was gonna skip it,
but you got me, You got me. It's just such
(12:14):
a convenient phrase. We're diving into this space between these
two conflicting facts, and let's see how we can respond
to this question, can an object be haunted? We'll get
into it after a word from our sponsor. Here's where
(12:38):
it gets crazy. Oddly enough, the best place to begin
here is with dolls. Did you guys like knowl you
said you've got to You've got a particular weakness for
creepy ceramic clown figurines. Those are kind of doll like.
I was more, you know, dolls for for young boys,
which we call action figures. I was very into human
(13:01):
and ninja turtles, and you know, g I Joe and
stuff like that. Um. I even had a weird like
crossover interest in my little pony growing up. I remember
that very distinctly. Uh dolls, Yeah, I mean they're really
just dolls, are just posable figurines of some sort. I
guess the idea of dolls tends to be associated with uh,
(13:23):
young girls, but that also feels a little you know,
in this day and age overly gender. I mean, dolls
are obviously for anyone, but um, they certainly can be creepy,
those porcelain ones with the very very white uh and
and expressionless faces, um, and seemingly real hair. You know,
(13:44):
gender is a construct. Dolls are for any kind of
creep who wants one. Good good point people you think,
I'm sorry, we think of people's grandmothers, though, having rooms
just overflowing with these things and just looking down upon
you from high shelves. Thankfully, my grandmother was not one
of those people. But but bless you to anyone who
(14:05):
has one of those and had to grow up around
that kind of horror. I'm just gonna posit something here.
My son is five. We've talked about him a couple
of times. He loves stuffed animals, So not quite dolls,
but similar because a lot of dollmakers, you know, especially
when we're gonna talk about in a little bit, we're
originally making a stuffed animal or stuffed animals as a product,
(14:25):
and then dolls came later. Generally not always that, that's
not always the case, but stuffed animals. You guys, I
think you've seen it before, maybe just the everybody on
this call, But my son was gifted a Mickey Mouse
doll that is like human sized. It's bigger than my son. Yeah. Yeah,
(14:47):
is that one of those gifts as a parent you're
kind of like, thanks. Well, I mean, he loved it
at the time when he first got it. He still
loves it now, calls him Big Mickey. At night when
I'm putting my son to sleep and that thing is
in the room, I am telling you, no matter what
my personal beliefs, just sitting in the corner in the
shadows and seeing its dimensions there, there is something utterly
(15:13):
creepy about it, and I don't know how it It
doesn't give my son nightmares, he says. He feels safer
knowing that it's there, you know, like I've got um
I probably had a different background from you guys, because
in my earlier years, my very early years, I did
(15:34):
have some sketchy family characters with my loved dearly. One
of them, I may have mentioned to you guys off
air before, was my great aunt nine spelled like the
spelled like the number. And she was regarded as a
practitioner of things that might be considered you know, hedge
(15:58):
magic or folk magic. And she had quite a collection
of all sorts of interesting things and artifacts. And this
was the first person I met who had dolls that
she considered dangerous dolls that were made for a purpose
(16:19):
of specific types. And this is something that is going
to be familiar with a lot of the folklorist in
the crowd today. It's also an ancient practice, and it's
practice I was not aware of at the time. But
we'll we'll get to it. So I guess in a way,
I had early experiences with dangerous dolls, and my Aunt
nine has passed on to whatever is on the other
(16:44):
side of this crazy improv exercise we call life. But
I also I think that colored my perception of dolls
in general, you know, And I would see other people
with these things. I would inevitably think like, oh, what
are they what are they doing with this one? Is
(17:04):
this like a is this like a barbie? Or is
this like a don't touch it, someone will get sick
kind of thing. Uh, we all have this place. And
I love the point about dolls versus action figures. They're
really the same thing. They're figurines, right, of different genres
or types. But yeah, we're talking about the things that
(17:26):
are commonly regarded as toys or collectors items here in
the modern age. For some of us, those are very
nostalgic relics of childhood. For others, they're irredeemably creepy. It's
no surprise that when people talk about haunted objects nowadays,
they tend to talk most often about dolls and and
(17:49):
there are a couple of pop culture reasons that are
very obvious that will get to. But one of the
most infamous haunted objects is a doll called an About.
And this comes to us from the warrants that we
mentioned at the top that we also did an episode
on I Forgot about that. Is it a two part No,
it's just a one partner. It's great, really great info
(18:11):
in the Warrens. So let's talk about him. Um, they
are paranormal investigators. They are I believe they style themselves
as demonologists. Is that true, Ben, I think demonologists Ed
Warren the or Ed Warren passed away, I believe. But um,
(18:32):
he was a demonologist and Annabelle uh first, like was
made known to them way back in nineteen seventy and
you probably know it because of the film series. But
this was a real doll that these paranoral investigators and
demonologists like encountered. There was a student nurse who contacted
them because they were already kind of known for what
(18:53):
they did. Um. She claimed that the doll was just
being weird, like, hey, I got this doll in. It's weird.
It's not just weird looking, it's being weird, it's doing stuff.
She said that, uh, a psychic told her it was
inhabited by the spirit of a dead person, a girl
(19:14):
named Annabelle, And immediately the Warrens are like, Okay, yeah,
we need to see this doll. Let's check it out.
And the legend was born, right Yeah. According to the
accounts from the Warrens, this nursing student had a roommate
and she and her roommate when they had learned from
(19:34):
a psychic that this doll was inhabited by a spirit
of a of a dead human girl. They tried to
make peace of sorts to arrive at an armistice, you know,
and respected space pebesiance to it, etcetera. But they had
no luck. The events continued, and they accelerated, and they
(19:57):
became worrisome and frightening and potentially to pay on how
you hear it described dangerous, So in desperation, the student
reaches out to the Warren's. Just like you said, Matt,
Long story short. You can hear more about it in
our previous episode. The doll Annabelle is currently contained in
(20:18):
a glass display box at the Warren's Occult Museum there
in Monroe, Connecticut. You can go look at it. It
doesn't look like the Annabelle of the movies. I would
argue it looks a little more creepy. But as you
can imagine, skeptics have some issues with the story here. Uh,
they're not They're not quite accusing. Not everybody is saying,
(20:42):
you know, these folks are con artists or anything like that.
There's a guy named Joseph Laycock wrote a fantastic article
about this at the time, it was a Texas State
University assistant professor of religious studies. He thinks the story
may have been influenced by the cultural ecology of the time,
by the zeitgeist, because you said, right, that's when when
(21:05):
the story of Annabelle again begins. According to the Warren's
something else happened a few years prior. There were other
scary doll tropes, like a great Twilight Zone episode called
Living Doll, which came out just about five years before
that Warren story. And this doesn't prove anything, but the
(21:25):
character of the mother in that episode is also named Annabelle.
So if you're really skeptical or you're kind of cynical,
do you think ed Warren found this doll and kind
of thought about the Twilight Zone and then said we'll
call it Anabelle. You know, maybe or even the if
(21:48):
it's true that this nursing student really was experiencing something weird,
maybe it was because of that Twilight Zone, the episode
that she caught. I mean, you know, who knows there
it's all in a conjecture, right, Hey, can we just
take a moment and really appreciate Nohl's hat right now,
just before we do anything else. Well, can we appreciate
the fact that this hat was gifted to me by
(22:09):
the magnanimous Ben Bolan. Uh. It says Illuminati on the bottom,
and what is this on the top. Don't trust anyone? Yes,
not haunted by the way, definitely not haunted. I do
trust some people. Definitely trust you too, mostly, But but
(22:30):
I I do like the hat and I wanted to
rocket today. So thank you Ben. Sorry for Well, we're talking.
We're talking about objects, right, That's that's another object. There's
the there's the nihilistic argument that we're all just objects,
you know, floating in space. And and really, if you
think about it, I was going to save this for later,
(22:52):
but if you think about it, you are listening from
a haunted object right now. You are as a consciousness,
as a mind, You are inhabiting a body. You are
haunting it, you are possessing it. Your body is a
haunted house just happens to be growing all the time.
(23:13):
So so so I love that John Mayer song Your
body is a haunted house. Yeah, I have to go
and go. It's better than the temple one. Uh. This
this brings us to the idea of haunted dolls in
the modern day, so excellent horror franchise, The Conjuring. They
(23:33):
get ahold of this story. It's been in, it's been
around before you know. They're like the spooky docuseries unsolved
mysteries type investigations, but the Conjuring takes it to the
world of fiction, or people might argue even further into
the world of fiction. And Annabel goes from being an
oddity and a small Connecticut museum to a global phenomenon,
(23:55):
the subject of three different films, and it cements its
status as the world's most famous haunted doll, if not
most famous haunted object. But it's not alone. There is
another ext There actually multiple examples of allegedly haunted dolls. Specifically,
(24:16):
and uh, we found one that you might not have
heard of unless this was already very much your bag
of of badgers, your bag of stuffed badgers, your stuffed
bag of stuffed badgers, anyway you would. You might be
surprised to hear of another doll that came to prominence
around the same time, whose name is simply Robert full name,
(24:37):
Robert the Doll. You just want to go ahead and
apologize to Robert before we even start talking about him. Um,
just Robert, We're sorry. We were just talking about you
for the purposes of this show. Yeah, you've done a
lot for the podcast, Robert. We just feel like this
is a story we need to tell. In full disclosure,
Robert may or may not be on the board of
(24:58):
Illumination Global Unlimited, so we want you to know that
we're doing our best to be fully transparent and did
not exhibit a conflict of interest. Um, Robert's a real
physical doll. And you guys know how I hate uh
all right, I just I don't respect clowning people for
(25:19):
physical features or anything like that. I guess we can
get away with it, maybe with Robert. Can we see
can we say it? Can we just say the quiet
part out loud? He is creepy looking? Yeah, he really
is creepy looking. Um. You can go online to a
lot of places and see actual images of Robert first
and foremost, Robert the doll dot Org. Just have to
(25:41):
throw that out there. I love love that you are
l exists. That is what he looks. He's like a
creepy sailor. He looks like kind of like a doll.
Where it's like, show me where the bad man touched
you kind of doll. Um also like like like maybe
like a dummy he would use to do like CPR
practice or something like that. But very uncanny, these weird
(26:03):
segments of fabric that are joined together to make the
different sections of his face. That seems very Hannibal lecter e.
That's see, it's I don't know, that's I mean, obviously
no offense. Robert h no offense. So let's talk about Robert.
Robert was let's say, the possession of it's a doll,
it's a thing. So it was owned by Robert Eugene
(26:27):
Auto as a person. I propose we call Robert Eugene
Auto Gene for the purpose of this story, just to
keep it, keep it clear fully, Gene was Roberts caretaker.
Let's say. Um, and you can read a lot of
different stories, origin stories, some that claim to be original,
(26:50):
some that seem to be sort of fan fiction. Um,
you can read it just a ton of different versions
of Robert's story. But let's let's just talk about the
official one that you can find there on that website
you just mentioned. Nor. Yes, it was created as a
one of a kind creepy doll by the Steve Company.
I'm thinking, as Steve might be stife, I'm gonna go
(27:12):
Steve Company of Germany near the turn of the century.
Um it, I don't want to hear ta rary. He
is forty inches tall and stuffed with wood wool, which
is known as excelsior, which I am tickled by because
excelsior is also a term that journalists would maybe used
(27:32):
to define something of excellent quality, maximum luxury, and it
was a Marvel Comics legend, stan Lee's personal life motto
excelsior with the exclamation market them. But it's also wood
wool shavings. It's basically it's like wood sawdusty type shavings
that you can use to stuff something with. So probably
already has a bit of a you know, shed like
(27:55):
smell to it. And yes, he is in fact dressed
like a sailor in a little stay other suit. And
at one point he was painted kind of like a
court jester. Um. But but all that stuff is worn
off over the years. Um. And he is quite large, right, Yes,
yeah he's Ah, he's a big mickey all his own.
(28:18):
So the the official story is that, uh, the Auto
family was a pretty prominent family in Key West Florida,
and Otto's grandfather was on a trip to Germany in
nineteen o four. This is where he is believed to
have picked up Robert as a gift for his grandson.
(28:41):
The story is as as Matt said, a little murky
at this point, because the legends get a little bit juicier.
You'll see one that claims a young woman of quote
Bahamian descent gave Otto this doll, either as a gift
or as a curse, kind of a poison apple for
some unspecified slight. And whatever the case, and whether the
(29:04):
legend or the official story, the truth of the matter
is that Auto becomes incredibly enamored of and attached to
this doll. He names it after himself, Robert the Doll.
Something interesting happens psychologically. He builds, or he gets his
folks to build a boy's home, a boy's room in
(29:26):
the attic and the family attic just for Robert, you know,
complete with toys, chairs, a bed, the whole nine. And
then he started blaming anything wrong that he did on
this doll. So someone would say, hey, did you track
in mud on the floor or sand or something like that,
and he would say that wasn't me. That was Robert,
(29:49):
and they would say, oh, okay, Jean, but this is
starting to get a little weird, you know, as this
your imaginary friend, et cetera. They probably didn't think about
it at the time, but I know a lot of
our fellow conspiracy realist in the audience are wondering, was
this boy making a tulpa a thought form interesting yeah,
or what was he dealing with something, you know, mental
(30:12):
health like in his life that some kind of disassociation
or some kind of you know, application of his own
actions onto this thing as a Anyway, I'm not a
psychologist who knows what was going on inside Jean and
or Robert, but it's a it's definitely strange because it
wasn't just a childhood thing, right, This relationship between Robert
(30:36):
the Man and Robert the Doll continued. Yes, Jean became
a pretty well known regional artist who is widely considered
an eccentric. The partnership between Robert the Guy and Robert
the Doll continued well into adulthood. Um, that's an interesting
point about disassociation too. We would have to ask where
(30:59):
it came from. Could there have been some sort of
traumatic situation occurring if so, that's lost to history. Eventually,
Robert the Man, Robert Eginato, passes away. His wife, who
survives him, has always hated this thing, you know what
I mean. She's she's of the mind that you know,
(31:19):
call her conservative, but she's thinking a marriage is between
two people, not two people in a doll. Anyhow, as
soon as he passes away, she orders that this doll
be locked up in a cedar chest and hidden in
the attic, never touched again. She passes away, and years
(31:41):
and years after her death, this doll Robert is rediscovered.
And now if you wish, you can visit Robert at
the East Martello Museum. Oh, we should mention it wasn't
just a situation of Gene. Robert the Man be weird
it around the doll. Other people said the doll would
(32:04):
do weird stuff, like it would move, it would exhibit
facial expressions. Maybe it would change. It would change, Uh,
it would People would hear voices around it, things like that.
And now if you wish you can visit Robert. He
still has his stuffed teddy bear too, because he had
(32:24):
his own toys. Remember, Oh, dude, I forgot about that.
That was that was the whole thing. If you if
you check out Robert at the museum right now, he's
holding a doll himself, So it is uh, I don't know, man,
I wonder if that Teddy Bear then becomes the next
(32:44):
thing somehow infected or it's a host. But this it's
strange because if you look at the history of this
of this guy, it came into the public eye kind
of around the same time as Annabelle or its discovery,
which means it was also a few years after that's
(33:05):
Twilight Zone episode. Just Teddy Rucks been figure into all this,
that's my big question. My Teddy Rucks been asked me
not to include them in this episode. Fair enough, my
Teddy Rocks, but also has a bit of a hold
over me, so we'll just change the subject. Still my
absolute favorite thing as a kid. When did you put
the other tapes in like that many tapes? Yeah? But
(33:30):
did you put in like your Mega death tapes? Oh? Yeah,
well no, it was um guy with Michael W. Smith.
Well that's not evil at all. Takes on a whole
different feel when you put in like some satan music.
Did you hear that? Holy cal al right? When I
(33:51):
said satan music, there's this huge thunderclap. It's been great.
I don't know if you guys can hear it on
my end, but it's still going. It's been going. That
was the big one, the first big one I've heard
in this recording, and you just right after you said that.
So we know that when people go to visit Robert
at this museum, they some some people will still report
(34:14):
that they've experienced something they can explain, and a lot
of people right to the doll after visiting him, isn't
that correct? That's right. Apology letters are often written to
Robert for visiting him without his permission. If you go
to many YouTube videos about Robert the Doll, you will
see in the comments section, post after after post after
(34:35):
post of people saying, hey, sorry, Robert, just we want
to learn about your story. Didn't mean to disturb you
or you know, sorry for watching or learning about you
without your permissions. One joking about that earlier, I for one,
would like to extend a heartfelt apology to Robert for
all the terrible things I said earlier in the podcast.
So please for my humblest apologies, Robert, and please please
(34:57):
forgive me. Forgive me, Robert. I hope you're doing well.
I feel no need to apologize to you. Um I
do wish you the best, but I will call that
you seem to be treated better than a lot of
human beings these days. Throwing shade at Robert. I'm so
(35:17):
glad that we have an image like looking behind you, Ben,
so when Robert just kind of creeps up behind your shoulder,
we'll be able to give you just a split second warning.
That's not a ding That's not a ding on Robert.
That's a ding on the human species treat each other better,
you know what I mean? Who else should you be
apologizing to folks anyway? That's anyway anyway. Those are the circumstances.
(35:42):
We just thought that's an interesting story because it shows
that there's not just one example of this. In fact,
there are multiple other examples. There's Letter the Doll in Australia,
there's Okiku in Japan. The list goes on and on.
So we have these caces of things that pre date Annabel,
(36:04):
the most famous haunted doll, by a bit. But the
truth of the matter is that the story goes much
much deeper. You see, haunted dolls, or some version of them,
date back into antiquity. What are we talking about. We'll
tell you afterward from our sponsors. We're back and we're
(36:31):
going back in time. We're going far far earlier than
the turn of the twentie century. We're going far far
past the creation of the US. We're looking at early civilization,
the earliest predecessors of things like Annabelle and Robert. We're effigies.
There was something called poppets p O p p e
(36:54):
t s and folklore. These are dolls that are made
to represent a specific person for a specific reason. Uh,
and they were created by all sorts of early civilizations. Yeah,
it wasn't there a thing about poppets in the Crucible
about that being sort of a witchy item, a puppet,
And if I'm not mistaken, it's something that you hear
kind of stylized, which is say, oh, my poppets, my
(37:17):
little poppet, referring to children they're about to eat or something.
But yeah, no, I'm pretty sure that was definitely a
cursed object or it was in our our item in
the Crucible that maybe was tied back to the bewitching
of of many of these children in them in the village. Yeah, yeah,
you're correct. There's a cousin to the poppet that we're
going to talk about. That's basically the thing that you
(37:38):
probably have in your mind even while we're talking about them,
if you are not remembering the crucible stuff. But but
these were made all over the place. We're talking rome
Um in Africa, West Africa and Egypt. These these puppets
were used or these specific types of effigies um and
a lot of times it wasn't necessarily for a bad thing.
(37:58):
That's what's kind of cool about these. Sometimes it was
almost like us, like a sin eater, spirit eater kind
of thing, where the poppet could help somebody, like you
could remove a curse from somebody by using one of
these things. You could heal somebody perhaps by using one
of these things. And if it was made of, you know,
(38:19):
a specific human, specific person. But the other thing is,
and this is where the kind of cousin to it
comes in. You could perhaps make one of a person
and then curse the doll, and then it would imbue
that curse into the actual person that it represented, right,
break the legs, put nails into the eyes, things things
(38:41):
of that nature. That's correct. Versions of this practice continue
in the modern day, it's not you know, as widespread
and the right you hear that or is it? Yeah,
this is the perfect weather to record this. So versions
of it do continue, they're probably just not as widespread. Uh,
(39:04):
we do at this point we want to make an
important statement about so called voodoo dolls, and that is
the cousin that I was referring to. Got it, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You can find them in novelty stores. There's even a
couple of like instructible or wicki how articles about how
to make your own legit ones. Uh. The term voodoo
(39:28):
doll usually describes several different kinds of effigy creation and
these different cultures across the world. But to be absolutely clear,
these kinds of things don't really have a prominent place
in Haitian voodoo or Louisiana voodoo, which are two distinct
yet related actual religions. So the a lot of the
(39:52):
conflation of um, these sorts of effigies with the practices
of that we would term loosely voodoo, uh, come about
from racism in the past. This this is more this
was probably more common like the people practicing that kind
of stuff in the crucible or being accused of doing so.
They're being accused of having a lineage dating back to
(40:15):
European uh, pre Christian or pagan practices. It's it's just
it's a very important distinction. Dolls are not the only
thing that has been alleged to be haunted. They steal
the spotlight today, but let's remember fiction is full of
things like haunted cars, a love of Stephen King's, haunted boxes,
(40:36):
haunted houses, haunted shoes, etcetera. It turns out there is
an entire cottage industry of haunted objects out there today.
And thanks to the great work by a New York
Times journalist, Alicia De Santis, uh, you can take a
closer look at this subculture that is selling haunted items
(41:00):
on eBay, and they want to give you an opportunity
to buy one. Uh spoiler. Most of them are dolls,
but there's other stuff too there. I'll give you an
example right here. I am looking at an active item
for sale right now. It is titled Haunted Active Dolls
(41:22):
Paranormal Spirit of Vanessa, and it is a It looks
like an American girl doll, maybe a little maybe even
a little better made. I don't know the craftsmanship on
American Girl Dolls is very high. But this looks pretty incredible.
The blue eyes are haunting. Here we go. Uh, I
(41:44):
found one that I was I was reading earlier. Just
I just felt the vibe of this gothic cursed item
devil Satan, legia board, baffroom, that paranormal psychic tarot. That
is a winning combination there, my friend on itemte watchers
(42:05):
right now. Yeah, it's all one night. It's only fifty
five bucks o bio or best offer. So for that
in fourteen dollars shipping, you could get all those keywords
together today. That's like a cursed tur ducan is. Yeah,
that's say it cursed your ducket. Uh, dude, I just
you guys, I'm looking at I don't know what this is.
(42:26):
It's an authentic bo that's a that's a gremlin or
goblin from the Jewish faith. I'm not mistaken. You are correct,
a malevolent spirit that can enter and possess the body
of a living person unless they're exercise. And uh, there's
(42:47):
an idea that has something in common with the myths
about jen that they could be restrained in a specific
type of container under the correct type of ritual. Well,
there are a lot of these for sale on eBay.
Can you can you imagine like what it must be
like on like the dark web, that's where the real
stuff is. Yeah, so you can you can go and
(43:12):
see this stuff yourself right now. And if you peruse
e Bay like Noel, Matt and I are doing, you'll
find everything from haunted jewelry too, haunted ups boxes for
some reason, feathers, pieces of frankly ordinary looking wood. But
the sentis has uh has something to note about this.
(43:34):
I like the way she put it. She said that
they might be said not to be haunted so much
as enchanted for specific reasons for luck, for fortune. Uh
that you have to you have to have a positive environment,
you have to have a good attitude when you're handling
this stuff, and that not all good luck applies the same.
So there are notes in these things. Are these biddings
(43:56):
where they'll say things like this chip is for money
luck only, not general good fortune or finding love, which
are different spells. And one thing that I one thing
I enjoyed was the disclaimers, because you know, when you
buy a lot of stuff online, you will see the
fine print and the notices, Like someone will say Okay, hey,
(44:20):
this is PS five or whatever, but it ships without
the box. Or I've got this, um, I've got this
g I Joe, but it doesn't have the little backpack.
They are there are things like this on the paranormal listings,
and they say stuff like, quote as required per Ebase
policy on the sale of paranormal items. This is for
(44:41):
the sale of the tangible item only, no promise of
a spirit attached. Sorry, sorry, it's yeah, this is just
the box to be cleared. Yeah. The the complaints can
give you a chuckle to because there are people who
are you know, seem to be genuinely concerned that shipping
(45:05):
this item may disassociate it from the spirit or they
feel like they ordered something believing it to be paranormal
or inhabited by something and they're just not catching any
any Jeff Goldblue Mask vibes off of it, so they
think that it's um. Now, the typical there is a
typical response to from the sellers. They say, it takes time.
(45:27):
You have to spend time with it, you have to
be familiar with it so that feels comfortable enough, you know,
to speak with you. You know what we should do
been we should build a panopticon and then in every
cell put one of these haunted objects and lock it
in there, and then you know, just observe them with
cameras and other sensors for I don't know, twenty years
(45:49):
something like that. Yeah, I think we could. We could
probably work a work something like that out in the
show budget. Uh, folks, me volunteers, let us know what
your favorite haunted objects are that could occupy our panopticon.
Extra points for a big Mickey esque figure, yeah, or
a like a fridge that you know survived an earthquake
(46:11):
or something, or a building collapse and then if you
if you there is a person actively looking at it,
it does something. We're like, Uh, a telephone that's that
is detached but still speaks to forces beyond our dimension. Yeah,
that would be amazing. Or a microwave, just like a
(46:33):
badass crazy microwave. I don't know it just can't you know.
It's like the Wolverine of the crew. I don't know. Um,
the brave little toaster was haunted, Ben, Do you think
he was somehow embodied by some sort of malevol a spear.
I mean, I know he was brave and super cute,
but toasts aren't supposed to hop around like that and
(46:56):
go exploring, going on adventures. Even the Ghostbusters Toaster just
kind of jumped around a little. Yeah, I don't know,
I would be all four haunted kitchen appliances. As a
matter of fact, that's gonna kind of come into play,
because we have a twist for you at the end
of this, folks. But here we have it as it stands.
(47:18):
Ancient folklore spiritual practices live on co modified to a
degree due to the nature of the society in which
we live. Some people just doubtlessly enjoy the stories. I mean,
it's cool, you know, like, hey, I got this haunted
according on eBay, that's a true story of my part.
It was advertised as haunted, and I was like, the
(47:39):
price is right. Uh if I haunted they meant some
of the reeds were broken, then yes, I guess it
is haunted. But but other people, you know, really enjoy
the mythology of these things. And then some people truly
do believe there's something inexplicable and supernatural a foot. We
can say there's psychology you behind it, definitely right, there's
(48:01):
this urgent need to anthropomorphize everything because it's our way
of explaining the familiarity or discomfort we feel around certain objects.
Like almost everybody has a lucky insert here, right, this
is my lucky hat. These are these are my this
is my lucky shirt kind of thing, right, mostly underwear,
(48:24):
but yeah, mostly underwear. Yeah, this is these are my
These are my business under ruse. These are my going
out under ruse. These are my business Tommy John's of
two Flight of the Concords. Uh. It makes sense then, though,
doesn't it, Guys that dolls would be so prominent in
(48:46):
this kind of folklore because they already looked just enough,
like for sure, I I wonder, I wonder if you
guys are doing this more recently actually anthropomorphy rising stuff
in your house or or any of you guys doing
that right now? I always have the one more ifies
the backs of trucks that they have faces on them.
(49:08):
Let's see, like, yeah, and cars are designed in the
in the front end at least a look kind of
like face. Like you could just have one big headlight
that goes across. You could have three, you could have
eight and have like a spider looking car, but no
two and a grill, little mouth, little face as their
(49:30):
hurdles towards you at eight five plus miles an hour
and you have just enough time to go. Ah, I'm wondering.
I'm wondering all about the backs of truck backs of trucks. Yeah,
like a semi semi you sort of have like you know,
the seam going down the back of it is like
the bridge of the nose, and then like the little
(49:51):
guardrail is sort of the nose. And sometimes it's like
mud flaps are like the teeth kind of you know
what I mean. Okay, I see it. So are the
are the doors the loading doors for the trailer they
like big eyes or they more like the cheek area.
It depends. It depends on where the lights are attached
and whether they're in the's any signage or anything that
adds to the illusion. But yeah, they certainly can be
(50:13):
ben they can be cheeks. Um. I'm having a hard
time explaining it. Something you just have to see for yourself.
But be on the lookout next time you're stuck behind
a semi. Just look for the face, LORI, for any
anyone LORI. Indeed. Uh. One of the last thing for
me is even those little hooks you used to hang
coats on. They look like drunken octopuses that are trying
(50:33):
to put their dukes up to fight with you. M
I saw it. It's something they're reading about that they
can't unsee it. It's like, especially when they're screwed in
with two screws and they're offset a little bit, so
it's like one of them is kind of like a
little bit little it's a drunk Yeah, yeah, it's trunk
ard octopus. But we all have things like this. There's
(50:54):
so many things that you have probably encountered in your
life where you thought that looks like a ace, that
looks like a figure, a humanoid figure, And that's because
your brain has been evolved to see those sorts of patterns. So,
like I'll admit, during this pandemic, as you said, Matt,
we all kind of because we were in a smaller
(51:17):
environment most of the time, we may have accelerated some
of this anthropomorphization. About eight months in, you know, I
looked around. I realized all this in my kitchen has
a personality. Now there's the good bowl, the trustworthy one,
you know what I mean. There's there's there's the fork,
(51:39):
there's kind of bold, it has panash and then there's
that one spoon. You can't trust it. There's that one spoon.
It's the Judas spoon. And that's like, clearly, that's just psychology.
Maybe that's just the force of boredom and a bottle.
We're all just terribly damaged by all of this. But
(52:00):
it's okay. I think it's gonna stay with us. I
think no one is still going to be seeing truck faces.
I think all our listeners are gonna still see weird
things and like vacuums or trash can lids that open
up like mouths, and uh yeah, I don't trust that spoon,
and I know it knows what it did. So for now,
(52:20):
the answer to Canton object be haunted seems to be
primarily something like, yes, at least it can be haunted
by the human need to explain the inexplicable and to
create personalities as a way of defining our own self
perceived relationships with things. And yes, of course copy If
(52:42):
science achieves a breakthrough improves that non physical events can
indeed leave impact on physical objects, this changes everything. This
changes absolutely everything. We'll have to redo this episode until then.
Right now, as as much of a bummer as it is,
to say it. There is no proof, universally accepted proof
(53:02):
of genuinely haunted objects. But there is one last twist,
something we wanted to save until the end. In the
very near future, we may have haunted objects. Fellow conspiracy realists,
We may very well build our own ghost. Uh. Yes,
(53:24):
we may build ourselves into ghosts or build a ghost
out of some I think it will be some very
very smart person that we want to keep around to
be like, no, don't go. We we we need you still.
We need to know what we need to do next. Um,
so you know, Mark Zuckerberg or somebody anyway, But no,
(53:48):
it's it's so true because we've talked about this before.
In our attempts to achieve immortality in some way or another,
we are using computer simulations, attempts at computer simulation and
very very very fast computers with tons of memory to
be able to simulate a person or a consciousness. And
(54:11):
we've we've been attempting to do this and we may
perfect it. Yeah, which is terrifying. Should be terrified. If
you're if you're more excited than you than terrified, then congratulations.
Kind of like me and we both have a lot
of stuff we should work on. In that case, Yeah, Matt,
you're on the money. The first truly haunted object on
the way is probably not a dusty stuffed animal. It's
(54:36):
probably not some cursed spear from an ancient war. Will
instead be the result of something called whole brain emulation
or w b E, the idea of uploading the entirety
of human brain, modeling it thoughts, memories, feelings, personalities, putting
it on a hard drive, putting it in the cloud.
(54:57):
This is a possibility. There are now like conceptually we
can understand, we we can understand how it would be done.
We can see the horizon where this occurs. We have
a lot of technological hurdles there, we have a lot
of ethical hurdles that we haven't considered yet. The main,
(55:17):
the main obstacle right now, ship of thesis aside, is
that first we have to manage to achieve something called
the connect dome, just like connect O m E. A
complete map of the human brain. Uh. We have been
able to do one complete map of one creature. It's
(55:41):
a nematode, so we know it can be done in theory.
But a nematode has about three neurads. Human brain has
about eight six billion, so we can't. We don't know
how to map. We just need a couple of thousand
more years and we'll be there. We'll be good. Well,
we'd also want to map a living human brain, right
ethics socide. Would it be easier to map a living
(56:06):
human brain if you didn't have to worry about what
happened to that brain? Yeah, I know it gets sticky
really quickly. And I was gonna say, I'm wondering if
there's some kind of because obviously it's our inability to
see into the brain, deep into the brain enough with
enough resolution to be able to pick out those, you know,
(56:29):
each neural pathway, because then you could definitely get a
pretty cool image of brains just by scanning them. But
it's not the same thing as looking at, like you said,
all of the neurons, right, and we uh, you know,
the tools we have, things like m R I and
so on. It's exactly as you described. There's just not
(56:49):
the level of sophistication we need here. But if someone
can map a brain and all its interconnections, the next
step would be trying to make an emulation of it
that could run, you know, run the copy of Paul
Mission Control decond creating something that will call a substrate
independent mind, or to be cut about it, a sim
(57:14):
this sim could exist, then it would inherently be conscious,
even if we don't understand what consciousness is for us.
It would be literally a ghost in the machine. For now,
this is hypothetical. For now, this is hypothetical, but the
technology and the research are continuing at a breakneck pace.
I think it's very optimistic that that you say, the
(57:38):
first immortal, the first ghost, first thing to haunt an
object like this, might be one of the world's smartest people.
I intended to say, I think it would be one
of the world's wealthiest people who was terrified of dying.
What do you guys think about that? I think my
example would hold true for probably both of those. Yeah, yeah,
(58:00):
did nail it on that one. Then that's exactly I
can't remember which season of West World it is, but
that's exactly one of the main plot points in one
of the HBO's West World seasons where it's essentially ghosts
in the machine. It's it's physical, well, it's programs that
(58:20):
are software built into hardware that then the software gets
transferred as a ghost into a server where now they
only exists exist virtually, but it's the full consciousness of
that of those at one point physical beings. Wow, that's interesting,
like San Junipero. Right, Uh, this there, there's a reason
(58:46):
that fiction centers on this kind of stuff and orbits,
these sort of concepts, you know, science fiction in particulars.
The genre is often prescient and in one way or another.
So don't be surprised if, uh, within your lifetimes, humanity
finally has the haunted dolls it has loved and feared
(59:08):
since the dawn of recorded time. They may just end
up being computers. At one of those ghosts one day
might be you. So what do you think, folks, have
you had any experience with mysterious or cursed objects? Let
us know where what objects appeared at, personalities and faces
for you, that's that's a very interesting question to write.
(59:30):
Oh and if you if you have those things, like,
I want to see pictures of the thing from your
point of view, I definitely want to see that. I'll
take a picture of the container that holds all my
dog food that has a giant flap on it, and
it's exactly how you described it, Ben. It totally talks
and yeah, it's it's pretty amazing. Does it have its
(59:52):
own favorite dog food? Oh? Yeah, it gets so upset
if I give it the grain free stuff because it's like,
you know, this is bad for these dogs, and I'm like, god, man,
it's talking trash to you. It's like, oh, oh, Frederick
came to play today. Well guess what, buddy, no games.
I thought green free dog food was good for my dogs.
(01:00:13):
I thought that's how it worked, but apparently it's not.
So sorry, and send us, yes, send us your favorite
pictures of things that appear to have faces. Bonus points
if they are trucks, automobiles, uh, send us to your
classics and let us let us know seriously what you
think about what we've touched on here. And if you
(01:00:34):
believe that you have found a genuinely haunted object or
you have witnessed one, of course we want to hear
about it. We try to make it easy to find
us online. That's where you can find us on Facebook,
On Twitter, where were conspiracy stuff or conspiracy Stuff show?
On Instagram, you can also join our Facebook group Here's
where it Gets Crazy. Just navigate over to Facebook, type
in Here's where it gets Crazy and answer a couple
(01:00:55):
of super basic questions and any listener the show should
be able to answer and you're in lots of fun,
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(01:01:16):
That's where you can see videos of these conversations and episodes,
and you can also subscribe. Tell your friends, make sure
you click the buttons that alert you when new episodes
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you'll figure it out. If you don't want to do
that stuff, you can always give us a call. That's correct.
If you feel like you have more of an oral storyteller,
then why not dial u up at one eight three
(01:01:38):
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(01:01:59):
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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