



Mandy is an antique porcelain doll over 90 years old supposedly made in Germany or England around 1910 or 1920. She was donated to the museum in 1991. What makes her so unusual is the powers some say she possesses. Almost immediately she gave the impression of being quite a creepy doll, leaving people feeling uneasy, especially when unexplained activity began to take place around her.



Her previous owner related to the museum all the strange things she is supposedly capable of. The donor would wake up to the sounds of a crying baby in the basement. Upon inspection, she found an open window and no baby. After Mandy the Haunted Doll was donated to the museum, the crying stopped. However, the museum staff and volunteers problems were just beginning. Lunches would mysteriously disappear from the refrigerator and be found tucked away in a drawer. Objects such as pens, books and pictures would go missing. Some would turn up later. Others were never found. Footsteps were heard when no one was around.



When she first arrived at the museum, Mandy didn’t have a “permanent” place within the building. She sat facing the public entrance and provided fodder for visitors. Later, she was placed in a case alone in another part of the museum. Rumors stated she couldn’t be placed with any other dolls, as she would harm them. Then again, she may not like being by herself. After being locked in a room, staff found papers thrown all around the room as if she allegedly had a tantrum. She’s been known to “play” around with electrical equipment, causing them to malfunction. Visitors have claimed to feel uneasy or sad around her. Some say her eyes have a tendency to blink or follow people around the room. Her fingers and head move on their own as well.







Origins...



A man was walking past the farmhouse when he thought he heard some crying coming from within. The odd part about this child's cry was that the passerby knew the farmhouse to have been empty, abandoned so no child should have been present. He walked up the drive and knocked on the door. No answer.



The crying continued so he had a look around. He entered the empty farmhouse and discovered the crying came from below his feet. Not knowing how to access the buildings cellar from the inside, he went back outside to find the external entrance. As he opened the double storm doors, light illu-minated the room, and he made a shocking discovery – the body of a young girl, long dead, lay on the floor, a doll held in her arms.



It is not known why the girl was in the cellar in the first place, whether it was by accident or as some form of crime/punishment. Regardless, it is believed that when she died, her spirit decided to inhabit the doll.







A horrible story, and no doubt a story you may not believe, however there is a link between some aspects of the dolls origin and the woman who had donated it to the museum.



When strange events surrounding the doll had started to take place at the museum, the Curator decided to visit the dolls previous owner. It was here she learnt the truth – the owner had not donated the doll for fear of her daughter breaking it, if that was the sole reason then she would have just placed the doll in a box and out of reach.



No, the real reason was that when the doll was in her house, the woman could hear a crying coming from the cellar, when she would investigate to find the source of the sound, she would find no body there, the cellars window would be open and the doll on the floor. When this began to happen more frequently, she decided to get rid of it and donated it to the Quesnel and District Museum.



The curator of the Quesnel and District Museum, British Columbia, Canada, was sitting at her desk when a antique doll was plonked down in front of her. Being donated to the museum was a 90 plus year old doll, the donor stating that it was getting old, was fragile and she did not want her young daughter playing with it and further damaging it.



The doll, named Mandy, had belonged to the woman's grandmother, but rather than being sad to be parted with what should have been a treasured possession, the woman seemed anxious to be rid of it.







The curator took hold of the doll, and immediately felt uneasy. She chalked the feeling up to the fact that the doll had an incredibly creepy look to it – its clothing was quite old and faded, the soft, stuffed parts of its body were ripped in places, but most creepy of all was the dolls face – it was realistically painted with glass eyes, but the forehead over the dolls right eyes was cracked, causing the eye to protrude slightly, like it was intently peering at onlookers.



Mandy was taken to the museums work room to undergo some maintenance before it could be placed on display. The doll was enclosed in a plastic bag, to test whether bugs had infested it (any bugs/insect leaving the doll would be caught by the bag, thus letting the museum staff know of in-festation).



However, the realistic looking, scarred doll being placed in a plastic bag added to the uneasiness the museum staff felt when they looked at it. Those working in the same room as the doll swore they heard the bag rustle as if the doll had moved inside, and it was not insects causing the movement either – the doll would change positions.











A Haunted Doll



After the initial analysis of the doll was complete, it was time to photograph it, a process all arte-facts at the museum undergo for the record books. Mandy was photographed and then left in the lad overnight. The next morning, when staff re-entered the lad, they found it had been messed up overnight – smaller objects had been thrown about the room and across the floor, larger, heavier objects just pushed over on the spot.



This would happen any time Mandy was left in a room by herself overnight. The Curator likened the mess to what would happen if a child had thrown a tantrum in the room.







When Mandy the Haunted Doll was finally placed on display within the museum itself, she was one of the first things visitors would see as they passed the entryway. They would mostly feel uneasy when looking at the doll, there seemed to be something incredibly wrong with it. At times photographs taken of the doll would not turn out, they would be blurred or have strange light anomalies present in them. It got to the point that the uneasiness felt by the visitors had staff placing Mandy further back in the museum, in her own glass display case.



Eventually a psychic enquired as to whether they could hold the doll, to see what they could pick up. Upon 'reading' the doll the psychic felt that it had suffered much abuse, but it was not the doll who was suffering, but rather the spirit that inhabits it.



What developed from this is an original story to the spirit inhabiting the doll. This cannot be proved and may just be legend/folklore, but it is believed that the doll was found in the cellar of an old farmhouse.















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