September 24, 2025 • 26 mins
Join Madame Strangeways for this true scary paranormal story about a possibly cursed ceramic frog and a possibly possessed Teddy Ruxpin doll that torment poor Rob in his childhood. As always, stick around after the story for a spectral analysis and some spooky pop culture history from the Madame about this haunting, and let me know where you land believer or skeptic! Follow the podcast to hear more true scary ghost stories and strange stories of the unexplained.
Thank you to Rob for granting permission to read their story from Reddit. Remember, Strangers & Strangelings & Strangecetera: you can feel afraid and not be in danger.
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Produced by: Madame Strangeways
♫ Theme Music by: Marina Ryan at marinamakes.co
Cover artwork by: Andrea Giselle Roldán at @cultofteddy
Every true strange story narrated in this podcast was read with permission from the original author.
Follow the podcast and explore strange, spooky and true paranormal stories as narrated by Madame Strangeways.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Is you just you just you know what?
You let it just come through you.
I am but a vessel. I am but a vessel.
I am but a gesture here for yourentertainment.
Welcome strangers, strangelings,and strange Selenius to Madam
(00:24):
Strangeways, where I, Madam Strangeways, narrate your true
strange stories of the unexplained.
And as always, solicited or not,usually not.
I share my strange observations,strange research, and strange
history and folklore as I drag you down a slew of strange
(00:45):
rabbit holes, kicking and screaming if needs must.
Today I've got one new true strange story for you.
But first, a strange shout out to my Patreon patrons, TJ
Hotter, G Man Music, Ted, Keith,and Tori, thank you so much to
my Feral Fiendish 5 for supporting the show.
(01:06):
Now, do you want to hear your name at the beginning of every
episode? Or how about an exclusive
sticker for joining or even access to Madam Strange Notes,
AKA voice notes of whatever strange stuff pops into my
brain? Join the Patreon today at
madamstrangeways.com. I feel a storm coming in.
I think it's about to rain Hellcats and hell hounds, so you
(01:29):
know what that means. On to our true strange story
here on Madam Strangeways. The Porcelain Frog by Rob I was
(01:59):
raised a Jehovah's Witness, so at a very early age I knew who
Satan and demons were. I'm no longer one but attribute
some of this story to my knowledge of them and I don't
know how to word this but because I was such a young age
maybe I was more accepting of them.
(02:22):
The mentality that a Christian would be attacked by them I
guess or the brainwashing that it was a demon maybe.
My mom and I lived in a small town in Colorado in a trailer.
I was maybe 10 years old. My room was at the very end and
could see down the hall into theliving room and kitchen.
(02:44):
I had a Teddy Ruxpin bear slash tape player and I would record
TRL music countdown on Kiss FM onto a tape, then play the tape
using the bear because the recorder's speaker was blown.
We were dirt poor so everything I had was from yard sales and
(03:05):
thrift shops. One day at a yard sale I found
this frog porcelain ceramic maybe figure that you could put
over the eraser of your pencil and took it home.
Everyone in school had troll dolls and wasn't allowed to have
them, so I was excited for the frog.
(03:29):
After a few hours I went to my room to listen to music and play
Zelda, and when I walked in, theTeddy Ruxpin started playing
Alanis Morissette You Ought to Know on its own.
Her album was the first cassetteor first music in general I ever
(03:49):
bought, but there's no way I'd play that song because it said
the F word in it and my mom would have taken it away.
So I quickly UN velcroed the vest to take the cassette out
but it wasn't in the effing bear.
I thought it was so weird and was more scared my mom would
(04:12):
hear it than it actually playingmusic.
I put my TRL cassette in and started playing it and then
Nintendo. That night I had what to this
day I think was my first nightmare.
Maybe I had them prior but this one I still remember to this
(04:36):
day. It was of my idea of what Satan
looked like. Similar to Hades in the Disney
Hercules movie, but instead of blue flames they were red and
the face was a mix of Hades and the Shadow King in the Marvel
show Legion. He was driving a convertible car
(04:57):
on a highway with no trees or mountains, but it didn't look
like a desert at sunset. Maniacally laughing.
I woke up and immediately woke my mom up and told her about the
dream. I wasn't the kind of kid to cry
and sleep with my parents ever. I liked my own space and to this
(05:18):
day have no idea why. I even told my mom I always kept
the Teddy Ruxpin on my night stand because I'd listen to
music falling asleep and when I woke up the bear was sitting in
the hallway in between my room and my mom's with its back
(05:38):
towards my door and bed. As I could see down the hall
with my door open. She walked right past it when
she came to my room then going back to bed she picked it up and
brought it into my room and put it on my dresser.
The following day we had to go door to door preaching and my
(06:00):
mom was for some reason telling the car group my nightmare and
one of the women immediately asked if we had purchased
anything and brought anything into the house and sure enough
my frog was on the list. When we got home the bear was
sitting on the couch and not in my room.
(06:22):
I would have no reason to play music outside of my room and
never took it out there. I remember just walking in and
staring at it for a good minute.My mom immediately asked me for
the frog and threw it away. After the toy frog left the
house. I never had an issue with the
(06:43):
bear playing music on its own ornightmares like that ever again.
I hid that Alana's cassette every time I was done listening
to it, so I have no idea how it got in the bear, no idea how the
Teddy Ruxpin moved on its own, but for some reason I was more
(07:06):
scared of the dream. Rob, thank you so much for
allowing me to Share your story.I don't know where to begin.
Do I begin with troll dolls? Probably not.
(07:30):
Do I begin with the fact that you were more scared of your mom
hearing hearing that first Alanis Morissette song that
dropped an F bomb? You seem to be more scared of
that than almost anything else. Do we start with Satan on a road
trip? And if you've seen OK, I'm not,
it sounds like the nightmare wasabsolutely terrifying.
(07:50):
And I know what you mean. Like you explain a dream, it's
like it doesn't sound that scarywhen you actually explain it,
but it was horrifying and you were filled with terror.
I fully understand exactly what you're saying and I experienced
those as well. However, what it kind of made me
think of was in Scott Pilgrim, if you've seen her read Scott
Pilgrim, how Ramona travels through Scott's brain because
there's like a shortcut in thereand she rollerblades through his
(08:13):
brain and that's why he thinks about her.
Is that maybe that's what we're hearing.
Maybe that's why Satan was just taking a shortcut through your
brain in a car. Just, I'm just throwing it out
there. I, I just genuinely, there's so
much going on in this short story, I don't even know where
to begin. But I think where I will begin
(08:33):
is that Rob, I hope that as an adult you have bought yourself a
troll doll or like a troll pencil Topper because you owe
that to your inner child. You wanted one as a kid.
And honestly, here's the thing. I assume that Mama Rob
specifically did not want the troll dolls in her home because
(08:53):
they were she probably perceivedthem as evil or like dark sided
would be. I assume why she didn't want
them in the house more so than the fact that the family was not
well off financially. I I I assume, but look at this.
If Mama Rob had just allowed a troll doll pencil Topper into
(09:16):
the home, 1 little pencil Topper, how much can 1 pencil
Topper cost? Michael $10.
If she had just allowed one singular troll doll pencil
Topper in her home, Rob would never have had to buy the the
Porcelain Frog pencil Topper figurine.
OK, we could have avoided all ofthis except that this is irony,
(09:39):
isn't it? Like, Speaking of Alanis
Morissette, that just happened, folks, this is this is what good
radio is all about, is you. Just you just you know what?
You let it just come through you.
I am but a vessel. I am but a vessel.
I am but a jester here for your entertainment.
So I think that the the mother actually kind of accidentally
(10:03):
causing this to occur, although she was attempting to avoid
having anything dork sided in the house.
I assume that that is actually an example of dramatic irony.
And you know, I could look it upright now, but instead correct
me Madam strangeways@gmail.com. I know there's a whole bunch of
different types of irony, and Alanis, I don't think captured a
(10:26):
single one of them. Was that the album?
OK, I don't know. We're not.
Listen. Focus, Madam, please.
Let's focus. So you may be listening and
being like, what are you talkingabout?
What is what are troll pencil toppers?
What is a Teddy Ruxpin here? I will tell you, dear listener,
dear listener, Troll dolls. I think they're now a movie.
(10:49):
I assume that's the troll franchise.
That coincidence is too much. But in the 80s and 90s there
were these tiny little naked creatures, humanoid gnome like
creatures. They were not creatures.
They were figurines. They were little toys and they
were naked and they had a littletiny jewel on their belly button
(11:09):
for some reason. And they had a really tall head
of fluffy, like neon colored hair and they all had different
colors. And it was like, what color is
yours? You're just like, oh, what color
is your belly button jewel? Why was it?
Why were why in, in hindsight, why, why was that so popular?
Is it like, does that coincide with the rise in belly button
(11:32):
piercings? Did which one came first, the
chicken or the egg? Were trolls with their
bellybutton jewels popular prior?
Are they? Are they why bellybutton
piercings became so popular? Or was it vice versa?
If you know, let me know. I'm out of Strangeways at
gmailcom. I'd be interested anyway.
You could get a miniature version.
They were probably, I don't know, a few inches tall, the
(11:55):
toy, not counting the hair. The hair kind of looked like
Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z. If you could imagine that, that
if you haven't seen a troll dolland you know who Vegeta is and
you look up, Google it and then tell me how right I am, which is
very. So you could have just a normal
toy or they had little miniatureones that you could stick on the
top of your pencil, like on top of the eraser at school.
(12:19):
And it was very cool. Like everybody had them.
Not everybody, obviously. I think I had one, but I was not
cool. So I don't know how that
happened that that's a fluke. Anyway, I know I had like, oh,
you know what? I just had this memory.
I just unlocked this memory. Rob just unlocked this memory
for me. I got a light blue.
(12:40):
It was like a the one I had was like a sky blue hair.
It was light blue and I was not normally like a blue person.
Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I do weirdly
occasionally tend towards like aa soft pass still blue, which is
really like really off brand forme.
But I don't know, there's just something about it.
Anyway, that's the one that I had was like, I don't know what
(13:01):
the pencil, it doesn't matter. We're moving on.
Madam, please, Madam focus. All right.
So you could get it as a little pencil Topper and it was just a
toy in the 90s or the early 80s,one of those two.
Now Teddy Ruxpin, moving on to Teddy Ruxpin.
He was a toy, yeah. In the late 80s where you put a
cassette tape in his back, you had to like UN Velcro his vest
(13:21):
and then to get to the thing in the back where you could put in
a cassette tape. I'm not getting into what is a
cassette tape. That's where I draw the line.
I, I'm 'cause this will be an hour episode and that's not what
we're doing today. So you put the cassette tape in
there and then his eyes and his mouth would move as the cassette
tape played. Now, this was specifically made
to be used with a cassette tape that had a story about Teddy
(13:45):
Ruxpin in it, where it's Teddy Ruxpin's voice talking to you
and so his mouth would move likehe was talking to you.
That's the idea. However, Rob, who was very
resourceful and and very clever,clever little boy, he decided
he's going to use that to listento his Alanis Morissette tape,
which I love it. I love the ingenuity.
(14:07):
So that's Teddy Ruxpin. If you Google Teddy Ruxpin,
you're going to be like, oh, this just looks like a Five
Nights at Freddy's baby. And you would not be wrong.
But remember, this is not that far removed from actually
probably happening at the exact same time as Showbiz Pizza, AKA
Chuck E Cheese using the animatronic animals in their
little band, which is what inspired Five Nights at
(14:29):
Freddy's. So clearly this is just sort of
happening in the zeitgeist alongwith belly button piercings and
belly jewels. So there it is.
That's that's if you were wondering what the heck is going
on in the story. There's in a nutshell.
I don't know why that's the sound of a nutshell, but we're
just going to move on. So you know, as as you know
well, as you may know, if you don't know me, Hello, welcome.
(14:53):
So glad to have you. I'm Madam Strangeways, pleasure
to meet you. If you have not listened to the
show before, I'm going to tell you this I2 things about me.
I will always try to remind you that you can feel afraid and not
be in danger. Like in this story, Rob was
very, very afraid, but Rob was not actually in danger.
Rob felt afraid. Rob was not in danger and it's
(15:14):
OK you can you can feel afraid. It's totally valid, but not
every single time that you're afraid you're in danger and our
brains, I'm not going to get into it, but it's a big thing
that helped me. It's helped me tremendously the
last few years using that saying.
So I hope that it helps someone else.
I actually stole it from the book Complex PTSD, and if it
(15:35):
resonates with you, you might want to give that book a read.
I didn't know I had see PTSD either until someone told me.
But the other thing about me, aside from wanting to remind you
that you can feel afraid and notbe in danger, is that I like to
look at things two ways. One, here's a paranormal or a
folkloric explanation about whathappened.
And two, here's a more naturalistic or a more mundane
(15:58):
explanation of what could have happened.
And then you can decide for yourself, like which one do you
think it is? I think in terms of a paranormal
lens that this is a really cut and dry haunted object.
I I mean, like it's, it's textbook haunted object.
You bring an object into your home.
You bought it at a yard sale. Who knows what was going on in
(16:20):
that family's house. Maybe they were Satanists.
By the way, I that's not, I don't.
OK, again, if you don't know me,I don't believe that that with
the Satanist thing. That's the thing so many people
blame everything on. Oh, and I heard that and they
were Satanists or like, Oh my God, did you hear there were
Satanists that live in, that lived, used to live in that part
(16:41):
of town and they sacrificed babies and they did XY and Z.
And OK, I don't think so. I don't think so.
But for the sake of looking at it through a paranormal lens,
that is something that you do typically hear.
So what was happening in that family?
Like where did they get the frog?
Was the frog perhaps imbued withwitchcraft, With
(17:03):
warlockcraftwhydontwehavethatwordwhyiswitchcraftawordandwarlockcraftisnotletmeknowmadamstrangewayis@gmail.comIf you know why that's the case
anyway. Is it imbued a negative energy?
Did they curse it? Was it cursed the little frog?
I mean, little frog figure? I don't know, but it sounds like
a very classic haunted object because as soon as the object
(17:25):
left the house, all of a sudden Teddy Ruxman is no longer
possessed. I do find it interesting that
all of the activity surrounded the Teddy Ruxman doll, who is
objectively really scary to lookat.
I mean, like even this is the thing about the 80s is all the
stuff that was for kids in the 80s was terrifying.
(17:46):
I honestly think I'm saying thatlike I'm sure that was the case
in the 70s sixties. I know if you go and you look at
retro hollow meet, wow, retro vintage Halloween masks, they
were scary and they were supposed to be for kids and
they're really scary and they weren't like scary like they
were intended to be scary. Like now you can go to Spirit
Halloween and they've got this, you know, gore fest supposed to
(18:08):
be horrifying mask that you could no, no, no, no, no.
It was supposed to be for kids. It was not meant to be scary.
And that's kind of how the 80s was.
So Teddy Rexpin was kind of terrifying on his own.
He really didn't need help beingpossessed, but I do find it
interesting that Teddy Ruxpin iswho was possessed.
If I if I was in a society for psychical research, I would want
(18:33):
to. Of course, it's not possible
now, but I would want to have examined the doll.
I would have wondered, well, when were the batteries last
changed? Like was like, were the
batteries dying around the time that this happened?
And then coincidentally, the batteries got replaced like
around the time that the frog left.
And and so it did appear that maybe the timing of the frog
(18:57):
leaving the house was actually just coinciding with fresh
batteries. But I don't know how to explain
Teddy Ruxpin making. I don't know how to explain
Teddy Ruxpin playing Alanis Morissette without the tape
inside the bear, which that partgot me like it was it was
(19:17):
obviously this is creepy, but I just that genuinely made me
laugh where he's like, so I quickly and Velcro the vest to
take the cassette out, but it wasn't in the effing bear.
So I don't know how to explain that.
But otherwise, all of the Annabelle adjacent teleportation
that Teddy Ruxpin was doing moving all around the house and
(19:39):
at night, it's really scary, very scary.
I don't know how to explain it. I don't know how to explain how
that happened from a paranormal standpoint other than just
possessed item, cursed item causing chaos.
Now, from a more mundane or naturalistic or like skeptical
(20:02):
point of view, here's kind of what I'm thinking.
Is you're already in a very religious house where Satan is
being mentioned and demons are being mentioned, which I happen
to also know a little bit about.And so it primes you right.
It's just like I've said before in a previous episode when I was
talking about the Warrens and Lorraine Warren and of course,
being a self-proclaimed and self-taught demonologist, and
(20:26):
when you call yourself a demonologist, everything's a
demon. It's just like when you have a
hammer, everything's a nail, right?
So when you're being taught and told about Satan and demons on a
regular basis, which you clearlywere, it does kind of prime you
to see demons or unexplained, you know, demonic activity,
quote UN quote, where someone else would not see that sort of
(20:48):
stuff. However, that does not account
for the things that you experienced and the things that
you saw, like the cassette tape,well, from the Teddy Ruxpin
playing music that was not inside the bear.
Like that part still gets me. And I think it makes complete
sense. Your nightmare I think makes
total sense because you were seeing this stuff kind of
(21:09):
happening and you didn't understand what it was, but you
were like, it's probably satanicbecause of your upbringing.
So I think that I think having that dream, while it was
terrifying, I think it makes complete sense.
And I, I would say from a mundane or naturalistic point of
view, that the nightmare didn't have anything to do with the
activity except that it was on your mind and that's where your
(21:32):
subconscious went because you'rebeing constantly inundated with,
you know, religious messaging. However, the most simple and
straightforward explanation, mundane explanation of all of
the unexplained paranormal activity would just be down to
memory being highly fallible. So I'm sure you've heard that
eyewitnesses are actually super unreliable and that you really
(21:56):
can't count on them in court because our memories are really
bad at details. Our memories rewrite themselves.
Every single time we access a memory, we are impacting it some
way and it is overwriting the previous memory.
And so really, what memories canyou trust?
That's the real scary story here.
(22:17):
But I've even looked into this specifically around children
because I remember seeing a bunch of really scary,
unexplained shit when I was a kid.
And what was that about? Well, partly what it may be
about is that developmental psychologists say that children
under the age of 12 have difficulty understanding the
difference between fantasy and reality.
(22:38):
And on its face, that sounds obvious, right?
Like, well, yeah, they're children, obviously.
But when it's you that has the memory and you were a child, and
you know what you saw? You know what you saw, you know
it doesn't. It doesn't feel like a good
enough explanation, but the the facts are there that if you were
below the age of 12 when you sawsomething really scary, that
(23:01):
your brain was even less reliable then than it is now.
And it's pretty unreliable rightnow.
So to me, that brings me a lot of relief to know that that is
just a common thing that kids have happened, that they see
things and they they misrememberthem or they misattribute it to
being something scary. And then not only that, but
(23:22):
there has been at least one study, I think definitely more,
but there has been at least one study citing that people can
accidentally take on a scene from a movie as a memory.
They think that something that they saw in a movie happened to
them. They think that because they saw
this in a film, they don't remember where they saw it.
(23:43):
All they remember was what they felt.
They remembered feeling the experience and feeling the
emotions and so their brain accidentally saves it as a
memory and it didn't happen to them.
It was a scene in a film. So I I think that there's
definitely from a mundane stance, that there's definitely
a case to be made for just misremembering, especially over
(24:07):
time. How many times have you thought
about that memory? How many times has it been
rewritten? I don't know.
Tell me, let me know, Is this reassuring to you like it is to
me? Let me know
madamstrangeways@gmail.com and also let me know what do you
think? Do you think there's something
mundane? Do you think it was something
paranormal? And also, did you ever own a
Teddy Ruxpin? Did you have a scary experience
(24:29):
with a Teddy Ruxpin or a troll doll?
If so, let me know madamstrangeways@gmail.com.
Thank you for joining me for more true strange stories of the
(24:52):
unexplained, remember that you can feel afraid and not be in
danger. You're safe here with me,
probably. Please follow the podcast, leave
a rating on Spotify or Apple, ortell your friends and foes about
the show. It would mean the world to me.
The underworld, obviously. I mean, come on.
(25:14):
Was that not? Was that not clear?
Madam Strangeways is produced and narrated by me.
Madam Strangeways thememusicisbymarina.ryan@marinamakes.co
Cover art is by Andrea Chisel Rodon at Cult of Teddy on
Instagram. You can submit your own true
strange story at madamstrangeways.com or e-mail
(25:38):
it to madamstrangeways@gmail.com.
See you soon, she said ominously.
Is you just you just you know what?
You let it just come through you.
I am but a vessel. I am but a vessel.
I am but a gesture here for yourentertainment.
Welcome strangers, strangelings,and strange Selenius to Madam
(00:24):
Strangeways, where I, Madam Strangeways, narrate your true
strange stories of the unexplained.
And as always, solicited or not,usually not.
I share my strange observations,strange research, and strange
history and folklore as I drag you down a slew of strange
(00:45):
rabbit holes, kicking and screaming if needs must.
Today I've got one new true strange story for you.
But first, a strange shout out to my Patreon patrons, TJ
Hotter, G Man Music, Ted, Keith,and Tori, thank you so much to
my Feral Fiendish 5 for supporting the show.
(01:06):
Now, do you want to hear your name at the beginning of every
episode? Or how about an exclusive
sticker for joining or even access to Madam Strange Notes,
AKA voice notes of whatever strange stuff pops into my
brain? Join the Patreon today at
madamstrangeways.com. I feel a storm coming in.
I think it's about to rain Hellcats and hell hounds, so you
(01:29):
know what that means. On to our true strange story
here on Madam Strangeways. The Porcelain Frog by Rob I was
(01:59):
raised a Jehovah's Witness, so at a very early age I knew who
Satan and demons were. I'm no longer one but attribute
some of this story to my knowledge of them and I don't
know how to word this but because I was such a young age
maybe I was more accepting of them.
(02:22):
The mentality that a Christian would be attacked by them I
guess or the brainwashing that it was a demon maybe.
My mom and I lived in a small town in Colorado in a trailer.
I was maybe 10 years old. My room was at the very end and
could see down the hall into theliving room and kitchen.
(02:44):
I had a Teddy Ruxpin bear slash tape player and I would record
TRL music countdown on Kiss FM onto a tape, then play the tape
using the bear because the recorder's speaker was blown.
We were dirt poor so everything I had was from yard sales and
(03:05):
thrift shops. One day at a yard sale I found
this frog porcelain ceramic maybe figure that you could put
over the eraser of your pencil and took it home.
Everyone in school had troll dolls and wasn't allowed to have
them, so I was excited for the frog.
(03:29):
After a few hours I went to my room to listen to music and play
Zelda, and when I walked in, theTeddy Ruxpin started playing
Alanis Morissette You Ought to Know on its own.
Her album was the first cassetteor first music in general I ever
(03:49):
bought, but there's no way I'd play that song because it said
the F word in it and my mom would have taken it away.
So I quickly UN velcroed the vest to take the cassette out
but it wasn't in the effing bear.
I thought it was so weird and was more scared my mom would
(04:12):
hear it than it actually playingmusic.
I put my TRL cassette in and started playing it and then
Nintendo. That night I had what to this
day I think was my first nightmare.
Maybe I had them prior but this one I still remember to this
(04:36):
day. It was of my idea of what Satan
looked like. Similar to Hades in the Disney
Hercules movie, but instead of blue flames they were red and
the face was a mix of Hades and the Shadow King in the Marvel
show Legion. He was driving a convertible car
(04:57):
on a highway with no trees or mountains, but it didn't look
like a desert at sunset. Maniacally laughing.
I woke up and immediately woke my mom up and told her about the
dream. I wasn't the kind of kid to cry
and sleep with my parents ever. I liked my own space and to this
(05:18):
day have no idea why. I even told my mom I always kept
the Teddy Ruxpin on my night stand because I'd listen to
music falling asleep and when I woke up the bear was sitting in
the hallway in between my room and my mom's with its back
(05:38):
towards my door and bed. As I could see down the hall
with my door open. She walked right past it when
she came to my room then going back to bed she picked it up and
brought it into my room and put it on my dresser.
The following day we had to go door to door preaching and my
(06:00):
mom was for some reason telling the car group my nightmare and
one of the women immediately asked if we had purchased
anything and brought anything into the house and sure enough
my frog was on the list. When we got home the bear was
sitting on the couch and not in my room.
(06:22):
I would have no reason to play music outside of my room and
never took it out there. I remember just walking in and
staring at it for a good minute.My mom immediately asked me for
the frog and threw it away. After the toy frog left the
house. I never had an issue with the
(06:43):
bear playing music on its own ornightmares like that ever again.
I hid that Alana's cassette every time I was done listening
to it, so I have no idea how it got in the bear, no idea how the
Teddy Ruxpin moved on its own, but for some reason I was more
(07:06):
scared of the dream. Rob, thank you so much for
allowing me to Share your story.I don't know where to begin.
Do I begin with troll dolls? Probably not.
(07:30):
Do I begin with the fact that you were more scared of your mom
hearing hearing that first Alanis Morissette song that
dropped an F bomb? You seem to be more scared of
that than almost anything else. Do we start with Satan on a road
trip? And if you've seen OK, I'm not,
it sounds like the nightmare wasabsolutely terrifying.
(07:50):
And I know what you mean. Like you explain a dream, it's
like it doesn't sound that scarywhen you actually explain it,
but it was horrifying and you were filled with terror.
I fully understand exactly what you're saying and I experienced
those as well. However, what it kind of made me
think of was in Scott Pilgrim, if you've seen her read Scott
Pilgrim, how Ramona travels through Scott's brain because
there's like a shortcut in thereand she rollerblades through his
(08:13):
brain and that's why he thinks about her.
Is that maybe that's what we're hearing.
Maybe that's why Satan was just taking a shortcut through your
brain in a car. Just, I'm just throwing it out
there. I, I just genuinely, there's so
much going on in this short story, I don't even know where
to begin. But I think where I will begin
(08:33):
is that Rob, I hope that as an adult you have bought yourself a
troll doll or like a troll pencil Topper because you owe
that to your inner child. You wanted one as a kid.
And honestly, here's the thing. I assume that Mama Rob
specifically did not want the troll dolls in her home because
(08:53):
they were she probably perceivedthem as evil or like dark sided
would be. I assume why she didn't want
them in the house more so than the fact that the family was not
well off financially. I I I assume, but look at this.
If Mama Rob had just allowed a troll doll pencil Topper into
(09:16):
the home, 1 little pencil Topper, how much can 1 pencil
Topper cost? Michael $10.
If she had just allowed one singular troll doll pencil
Topper in her home, Rob would never have had to buy the the
Porcelain Frog pencil Topper figurine.
OK, we could have avoided all ofthis except that this is irony,
(09:39):
isn't it? Like, Speaking of Alanis
Morissette, that just happened, folks, this is this is what good
radio is all about, is you. Just you just you know what?
You let it just come through you.
I am but a vessel. I am but a vessel.
I am but a jester here for your entertainment.
So I think that the the mother actually kind of accidentally
(10:03):
causing this to occur, although she was attempting to avoid
having anything dork sided in the house.
I assume that that is actually an example of dramatic irony.
And you know, I could look it upright now, but instead correct
me Madam strangeways@gmail.com. I know there's a whole bunch of
different types of irony, and Alanis, I don't think captured a
(10:26):
single one of them. Was that the album?
OK, I don't know. We're not.
Listen. Focus, Madam, please.
Let's focus. So you may be listening and
being like, what are you talkingabout?
What is what are troll pencil toppers?
What is a Teddy Ruxpin here? I will tell you, dear listener,
dear listener, Troll dolls. I think they're now a movie.
(10:49):
I assume that's the troll franchise.
That coincidence is too much. But in the 80s and 90s there
were these tiny little naked creatures, humanoid gnome like
creatures. They were not creatures.
They were figurines. They were little toys and they
were naked and they had a littletiny jewel on their belly button
(11:09):
for some reason. And they had a really tall head
of fluffy, like neon colored hair and they all had different
colors. And it was like, what color is
yours? You're just like, oh, what color
is your belly button jewel? Why was it?
Why were why in, in hindsight, why, why was that so popular?
Is it like, does that coincide with the rise in belly button
(11:32):
piercings? Did which one came first, the
chicken or the egg? Were trolls with their
bellybutton jewels popular prior?
Are they? Are they why bellybutton
piercings became so popular? Or was it vice versa?
If you know, let me know. I'm out of Strangeways at
gmailcom. I'd be interested anyway.
You could get a miniature version.
They were probably, I don't know, a few inches tall, the
(11:55):
toy, not counting the hair. The hair kind of looked like
Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z. If you could imagine that, that
if you haven't seen a troll dolland you know who Vegeta is and
you look up, Google it and then tell me how right I am, which is
very. So you could have just a normal
toy or they had little miniatureones that you could stick on the
top of your pencil, like on top of the eraser at school.
(12:19):
And it was very cool. Like everybody had them.
Not everybody, obviously. I think I had one, but I was not
cool. So I don't know how that
happened that that's a fluke. Anyway, I know I had like, oh,
you know what? I just had this memory.
I just unlocked this memory. Rob just unlocked this memory
for me. I got a light blue.
(12:40):
It was like a the one I had was like a sky blue hair.
It was light blue and I was not normally like a blue person.
Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I do weirdly
occasionally tend towards like aa soft pass still blue, which is
really like really off brand forme.
But I don't know, there's just something about it.
Anyway, that's the one that I had was like, I don't know what
(13:01):
the pencil, it doesn't matter. We're moving on.
Madam, please, Madam focus. All right.
So you could get it as a little pencil Topper and it was just a
toy in the 90s or the early 80s,one of those two.
Now Teddy Ruxpin, moving on to Teddy Ruxpin.
He was a toy, yeah. In the late 80s where you put a
cassette tape in his back, you had to like UN Velcro his vest
(13:21):
and then to get to the thing in the back where you could put in
a cassette tape. I'm not getting into what is a
cassette tape. That's where I draw the line.
I, I'm 'cause this will be an hour episode and that's not what
we're doing today. So you put the cassette tape in
there and then his eyes and his mouth would move as the cassette
tape played. Now, this was specifically made
to be used with a cassette tape that had a story about Teddy
(13:45):
Ruxpin in it, where it's Teddy Ruxpin's voice talking to you
and so his mouth would move likehe was talking to you.
That's the idea. However, Rob, who was very
resourceful and and very clever,clever little boy, he decided
he's going to use that to listento his Alanis Morissette tape,
which I love it. I love the ingenuity.
(14:07):
So that's Teddy Ruxpin. If you Google Teddy Ruxpin,
you're going to be like, oh, this just looks like a Five
Nights at Freddy's baby. And you would not be wrong.
But remember, this is not that far removed from actually
probably happening at the exact same time as Showbiz Pizza, AKA
Chuck E Cheese using the animatronic animals in their
little band, which is what inspired Five Nights at
(14:29):
Freddy's. So clearly this is just sort of
happening in the zeitgeist alongwith belly button piercings and
belly jewels. So there it is.
That's that's if you were wondering what the heck is going
on in the story. There's in a nutshell.
I don't know why that's the sound of a nutshell, but we're
just going to move on. So you know, as as you know
well, as you may know, if you don't know me, Hello, welcome.
(14:53):
So glad to have you. I'm Madam Strangeways, pleasure
to meet you. If you have not listened to the
show before, I'm going to tell you this I2 things about me.
I will always try to remind you that you can feel afraid and not
be in danger. Like in this story, Rob was
very, very afraid, but Rob was not actually in danger.
Rob felt afraid. Rob was not in danger and it's
(15:14):
OK you can you can feel afraid. It's totally valid, but not
every single time that you're afraid you're in danger and our
brains, I'm not going to get into it, but it's a big thing
that helped me. It's helped me tremendously the
last few years using that saying.
So I hope that it helps someone else.
I actually stole it from the book Complex PTSD, and if it
(15:35):
resonates with you, you might want to give that book a read.
I didn't know I had see PTSD either until someone told me.
But the other thing about me, aside from wanting to remind you
that you can feel afraid and notbe in danger, is that I like to
look at things two ways. One, here's a paranormal or a
folkloric explanation about whathappened.
And two, here's a more naturalistic or a more mundane
(15:58):
explanation of what could have happened.
And then you can decide for yourself, like which one do you
think it is? I think in terms of a paranormal
lens that this is a really cut and dry haunted object.
I I mean, like it's, it's textbook haunted object.
You bring an object into your home.
You bought it at a yard sale. Who knows what was going on in
(16:20):
that family's house. Maybe they were Satanists.
By the way, I that's not, I don't.
OK, again, if you don't know me,I don't believe that that with
the Satanist thing. That's the thing so many people
blame everything on. Oh, and I heard that and they
were Satanists or like, Oh my God, did you hear there were
Satanists that live in, that lived, used to live in that part
(16:41):
of town and they sacrificed babies and they did XY and Z.
And OK, I don't think so. I don't think so.
But for the sake of looking at it through a paranormal lens,
that is something that you do typically hear.
So what was happening in that family?
Like where did they get the frog?
Was the frog perhaps imbued withwitchcraft, With
(17:03):
warlockcraftwhydontwehavethatwordwhyiswitchcraftawordandwarlockcraftisnotletmeknowmadamstrangewayis@gmail.comIf you know why that's the case
anyway. Is it imbued a negative energy?
Did they curse it? Was it cursed the little frog?
I mean, little frog figure? I don't know, but it sounds like
a very classic haunted object because as soon as the object
(17:25):
left the house, all of a sudden Teddy Ruxman is no longer
possessed. I do find it interesting that
all of the activity surrounded the Teddy Ruxman doll, who is
objectively really scary to lookat.
I mean, like even this is the thing about the 80s is all the
stuff that was for kids in the 80s was terrifying.
(17:46):
I honestly think I'm saying thatlike I'm sure that was the case
in the 70s sixties. I know if you go and you look at
retro hollow meet, wow, retro vintage Halloween masks, they
were scary and they were supposed to be for kids and
they're really scary and they weren't like scary like they
were intended to be scary. Like now you can go to Spirit
Halloween and they've got this, you know, gore fest supposed to
(18:08):
be horrifying mask that you could no, no, no, no, no.
It was supposed to be for kids. It was not meant to be scary.
And that's kind of how the 80s was.
So Teddy Rexpin was kind of terrifying on his own.
He really didn't need help beingpossessed, but I do find it
interesting that Teddy Ruxpin iswho was possessed.
If I if I was in a society for psychical research, I would want
(18:33):
to. Of course, it's not possible
now, but I would want to have examined the doll.
I would have wondered, well, when were the batteries last
changed? Like was like, were the
batteries dying around the time that this happened?
And then coincidentally, the batteries got replaced like
around the time that the frog left.
And and so it did appear that maybe the timing of the frog
(18:57):
leaving the house was actually just coinciding with fresh
batteries. But I don't know how to explain
Teddy Ruxpin making. I don't know how to explain
Teddy Ruxpin playing Alanis Morissette without the tape
inside the bear, which that partgot me like it was it was
(19:17):
obviously this is creepy, but I just that genuinely made me
laugh where he's like, so I quickly and Velcro the vest to
take the cassette out, but it wasn't in the effing bear.
So I don't know how to explain that.
But otherwise, all of the Annabelle adjacent teleportation
that Teddy Ruxpin was doing moving all around the house and
(19:39):
at night, it's really scary, very scary.
I don't know how to explain it. I don't know how to explain how
that happened from a paranormal standpoint other than just
possessed item, cursed item causing chaos.
Now, from a more mundane or naturalistic or like skeptical
(20:02):
point of view, here's kind of what I'm thinking.
Is you're already in a very religious house where Satan is
being mentioned and demons are being mentioned, which I happen
to also know a little bit about.And so it primes you right.
It's just like I've said before in a previous episode when I was
talking about the Warrens and Lorraine Warren and of course,
being a self-proclaimed and self-taught demonologist, and
(20:26):
when you call yourself a demonologist, everything's a
demon. It's just like when you have a
hammer, everything's a nail, right?
So when you're being taught and told about Satan and demons on a
regular basis, which you clearlywere, it does kind of prime you
to see demons or unexplained, you know, demonic activity,
quote UN quote, where someone else would not see that sort of
(20:48):
stuff. However, that does not account
for the things that you experienced and the things that
you saw, like the cassette tape,well, from the Teddy Ruxpin
playing music that was not inside the bear.
Like that part still gets me. And I think it makes complete
sense. Your nightmare I think makes
total sense because you were seeing this stuff kind of
(21:09):
happening and you didn't understand what it was, but you
were like, it's probably satanicbecause of your upbringing.
So I think that I think having that dream, while it was
terrifying, I think it makes complete sense.
And I, I would say from a mundane or naturalistic point of
view, that the nightmare didn't have anything to do with the
activity except that it was on your mind and that's where your
(21:32):
subconscious went because you'rebeing constantly inundated with,
you know, religious messaging. However, the most simple and
straightforward explanation, mundane explanation of all of
the unexplained paranormal activity would just be down to
memory being highly fallible. So I'm sure you've heard that
eyewitnesses are actually super unreliable and that you really
(21:56):
can't count on them in court because our memories are really
bad at details. Our memories rewrite themselves.
Every single time we access a memory, we are impacting it some
way and it is overwriting the previous memory.
And so really, what memories canyou trust?
That's the real scary story here.
(22:17):
But I've even looked into this specifically around children
because I remember seeing a bunch of really scary,
unexplained shit when I was a kid.
And what was that about? Well, partly what it may be
about is that developmental psychologists say that children
under the age of 12 have difficulty understanding the
difference between fantasy and reality.
(22:38):
And on its face, that sounds obvious, right?
Like, well, yeah, they're children, obviously.
But when it's you that has the memory and you were a child, and
you know what you saw? You know what you saw, you know
it doesn't. It doesn't feel like a good
enough explanation, but the the facts are there that if you were
below the age of 12 when you sawsomething really scary, that
(23:01):
your brain was even less reliable then than it is now.
And it's pretty unreliable rightnow.
So to me, that brings me a lot of relief to know that that is
just a common thing that kids have happened, that they see
things and they they misrememberthem or they misattribute it to
being something scary. And then not only that, but
(23:22):
there has been at least one study, I think definitely more,
but there has been at least one study citing that people can
accidentally take on a scene from a movie as a memory.
They think that something that they saw in a movie happened to
them. They think that because they saw
this in a film, they don't remember where they saw it.
(23:43):
All they remember was what they felt.
They remembered feeling the experience and feeling the
emotions and so their brain accidentally saves it as a
memory and it didn't happen to them.
It was a scene in a film. So I I think that there's
definitely from a mundane stance, that there's definitely
a case to be made for just misremembering, especially over
(24:07):
time. How many times have you thought
about that memory? How many times has it been
rewritten? I don't know.
Tell me, let me know, Is this reassuring to you like it is to
me? Let me know
madamstrangeways@gmail.com and also let me know what do you
think? Do you think there's something
mundane? Do you think it was something
paranormal? And also, did you ever own a
Teddy Ruxpin? Did you have a scary experience
(24:29):
with a Teddy Ruxpin or a troll doll?
If so, let me know madamstrangeways@gmail.com.
Thank you for joining me for more true strange stories of the
(24:52):
unexplained, remember that you can feel afraid and not be in
danger. You're safe here with me,
probably. Please follow the podcast, leave
a rating on Spotify or Apple, ortell your friends and foes about
the show. It would mean the world to me.
The underworld, obviously. I mean, come on.
(25:14):
Was that not? Was that not clear?
Madam Strangeways is produced and narrated by me.
Madam Strangeways thememusicisbymarina.ryan@marinamakes.co
Cover art is by Andrea Chisel Rodon at Cult of Teddy on
Instagram. You can submit your own true
strange story at madamstrangeways.com or e-mail
(25:38):
it to madamstrangeways@gmail.com.
See you soon, she said ominously.
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