===TRANSCRIPT START===

Disclaimer.

This episode includes the usual amount of adult language and graphic discussions you've come to expect around here.

But in the event it becomes an unusual amount, expect another call from me.

Welcome back to Scared All The Time. I'm Chris Cullari.

And I'm Ed Voccola.

And this week, we're opening Satan's toy chest and rummaging through the history of the scariest toy not called the Ouija Board. We're talking dead-eyed, frozen-faced, probably cursed, and definitely freaky-looking dolls. I think a fear of dolls is almost universal, although also mostly modern. They fall into that category of clowns, witches, and axe-wielding maniacs, things that you can put on a movie poster and draw a horror-loving audience anywhere in the world. But why? What is it about these objects meant to bring joy and happiness that instead contras fear and dread, and how have scary storytellers used them throughout the years to rattle our sense of safety around what should be a beloved children's toy? So put away your porcelain dolls and lock up your cabbage-pats, kids, because we're about to find out what makes dolls so scary.

What are we scared? When are we? All the time. Now it is time for.

Nothing changes. Don't worry about it. Everything's the same. For a lot of people, Patreon is easier. So we have also opened a Patreon. Same benefits, same everything, different platform.

Yeah. And we got it done just in time last week so that people who have already signed up on Patreon, they got the live stream link and they were able to join us for the last live stream we did. And it was fun to have like a supercast Patreon co-mingling live show.

Yeah. Those live shows are a blast and it's awesome to see new people showing up. We hang out. We talk updates on old stories. I dig up new stories. It's really fun. So if you have yet to sign up for one of the services, go for it. Get our premium. You guys are the reason we can keep doing this show. We love you. We appreciate you. And there is much, much more to come. But beyond that, Ed, do we have anything else or are we just going to talk dolls?

I think we're just talking dolls. I mean, we have a great guest who joined us for the discussion and it was a lot of fun. And yeah, so I guess, you know, without further ado, let's get into dolls with Ally.

We're joined in our discussion today by two special guests. The first, you, dear listener, cannot see or hear. Well, you definitely can't see him. And if you hear him, something's gone very wrong. It's this ventriloquist dummy over my shoulder that I dug out of the closet to help set the mood for our actual real guest, Ally Malinenko, author of the upcoming middle grade horror book, Broken Dolls. Ally, welcome to the show.

Hi, thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Of course. Thank you for joining us. So Ally, you first came to our attention through another podcast we love here at Scared All The Time that we were just talking about before we jumped on called Talking Scared, which is a show where Neil McRobert interviews horror authors about where their stories come from and what scares them. We found his show when scouring Google to make sure there weren't any other podcasts called Scared All The Time. And our first time hearing Ally on there was fantastic. She was part of a three hour deep dive on It, the book It that went kind of, I guess, would you say it went viral in the horror writing community, Ally?

I mean, I don't know. I mean, it did get King's attention.

Yes.

You know, so that happened.

And not in the form of a cease and desist letter, which is nice.

Yes, and not in the form of a cease and desist letter. And it got me a follow from him.

Nice.

So that was very cool. And he's also very excited to read this new book of mine. He like DMed me about it, which was surreal.

I bet.

That is.

Yeah.

That is crazy.

I was like, what's happening?

I guess getting a DM from us maybe isn't as exciting, but thanks for being here.

I mean, you guys are great too.

Well, I was going to say we I see it a lot from the filmmakers side, because Stephen King also watches a lot of horror movies and will get in contact with directors and stuff. But I mean, obviously, we're all King lovers on this show. But I just I think it's so great that he's a guy who has not gotten any less. In fact, it seems like he's maybe gotten more or become a bigger. I don't want to say a bigger fan, but like he's not a guy who walled himself off in a tower and was like, I'm Stephen King and the rest of you can worship at my feet.

No, not at all.

Like he's just like, I love this. I love that. Have you read this? Have you read that? Like, that's such a cool way to be.

I feel like he just thinks of himself as like one of the horror gang. He's just one of us. And I think that's amazing because he's Stephen King.

Yeah. Well, I guess before we dive in to talking about dolls, I don't know how much you want to talk about the book or what you can say about the book, but do you want to tell the audience or us anything about what Broken Dolls is about?

Sure. Sure. So it's a middle grade book. And that for people unfamiliar with that term means it's for eight to 12 year olds.

Nice.

And it's a story of a girl named Kay, whose grandfather passes away and she has a lot of trouble dealing with that. She has a little sister, Holly, and they go upstate for the summer to stay at their uncle's place. And while they're there, they go to a fair and Holly wins a doll. And that doll is alive and basically is trying to turn Holly into a doll by convincing her that if she's a doll, she'll never die and she'll never have to worry about that. And so Kay's job is to convince Holly that even though death is sad and scary, it's what makes living worth it because it doesn't last forever. If it lasted forever, it wouldn't matter.

That's true. We were just talking about that in a previous episode about like in sudden death, like, would you rather live forever? And it just comes it becomes a bummer.

Yeah, it's a bummer. It's a giant bummer.

Yeah. So this is listener. We are learning this in real time, but this makes Ally a double perfect guess for the show, because I think not only do we talk about it in sudden death, but I think that's kind of it's kind of what every episode of our show is about in a way, which is like, yes, there's all these scary, horrible things out there in the world that could hurt you or kill you. But life is worth living around them anyway, and experiencing all the good and letting the bad put the good into context. So, yeah, incredible. Well, you've got two more readers lined up for Broken Dolls right here.

Oh, thanks.

And we have a pretty good show idea now, too, because I feel like we don't. Well, it's going to get dark fast. Maybe we shouldn't do it. But like the idea of bad things seeming like a good idea to live with forever. Like there's a lot of come hither attitude from scary things. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But I realize by doing that episode, we're going to have to enter. It's just a lot of stuff we like to avoid around here. So we probably just won't.

Good. Yeah.

Sorry, everyone, for derailing so early the episode.

But it's good. And I have a pretty good radar for when we hit a topic and we go, I think we could skip that one. But I mean, I can't speak for Ed. I love, admittedly, I read less middle school horror these days because I'm aged out a little bit. But I do love horror for kids. And I dip my toe into it every once in a while because there's something about, I've mentioned it on the show before, but I was scared of everything growing up. And so that feeling of discovering goosebumps and are you afraid of the dark and middle grade horror stuff, it weirdly taps back into that initial wave of fear that I felt becoming a horror fan. So in a way, sometimes reading middle grade books, it conjures up feelings like that, that even adult horror doesn't or it does it in a different way. because it puts me back in the feeling of being a kid and being scared as a kid.

Yeah. And I think it's good that there's so much of it now because like when I was growing up, there wasn't a lot because I'm a little too old for goosebumps. So I didn't read that growing up. I basically went from like reading fantasy books to sneaking the king off of my older sister's shelf. I'm reading that way too young of an age.

Yeah. Yeah.

You sure my mom didn't catch me because I was scared. I also was scared of everything.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I think that's a great pivot into a place to start the episode, which is Ed and I usually like to start talking about kind of like our personal experiences with the topic. So, Ally, what brought you to the topic of scary dolls for this book? Like, was that a childhood fear? Is it a current fear? Do you have a Cabbage Patch kid that won't die?

Um, you know, I think it is mostly stemmed from a lifelong love of Chucky.

Yes.

And always wanting to write something in that style where dolls are dangerous. And I just like the idea of it, you know, in general. And I have lots of like creepy dolls. So I share, I'm in my writing room and I share this room with my husband. I'm sitting on the chair. I'm going to show you this. Sitting on the chair next to me is my own little Annabelle.

No, don't need that in our lives.

And I swear every time he's in here, he turns her around. He's like, I can't, I can't look at her. I can't do it.

Oh my God.

So, yeah, I've just, I've always found them like creepy and interesting. And, you know, I just felt like it fit, you know, I knew I wanted to write about grief and I felt like this was, it just felt like a good horror fit to talk about the fact that, yes, death is scary, but it's going to happen. And it's good that it happens because that's what makes my life meaningful.

Yeah. And that's a great, I mean, so much good horror is finding that intersection of the theme and the horror that represents it. And I feel like that's a really interesting, it's one that I haven't heard before. The idea of turning into a doll is a way of voiding a fear of death. So that's really cool. Ed, what about you? Did you have scary dolls? Did your brothers beat you with Ken dolls when you were a kid or anything?

No, I wasn't beaten by Ken dolls or whatever you just said by my brothers. But there is, you know, it's interesting. I'm a little triggered from Ally holding up her Annabelle because I am, it's fine, in case you don't know, I am from a small town called Monroe, Connecticut, which is the home of the Warrens. And so for me, they were just people I'd see at the grocery store and stuff. But to other people, they're these paranormal investigators. And so on Halloween, they would come to like local middle schools and high schools, and they would do these like evenings with the Warrens. And so you would get a ticket and like you'd go and they would bring like demonic recordings and stuff. But like one year they brought Annabelle to Shelton High School.

And that was supposed to take her out of the box.

They brought the box. They brought the box.

Perfect.

Yeah. So it was in a case of some kind. And I was pretty young. So I remember it not being, it wasn't loose. You know what I mean? And but yeah, so I'm from the literal town where that thing resides. Wow. And so, you know, that's that's kind of my earliest, I guess, you know, that and poltergeist and like weird aunts that had little figurines. Yeah, I think probably in that same level of like dolls and like a lot of my family are antiques. And there's just so many things that come home from antique stores that should have stayed.

Yes, when I was a kid, there were two dolls that really fucked me up. One was this blonde doll. It was probably about, I don't know, like two feet tall, maybe a foot and a half. It was like a bigger doll. It was from this brand called My Little Buddy, which I think is the brand that they use to kind of like riff Chucky off of, was the My Little Buddy. But my mom or whoever got this thing for me didn't know that, I don't think. But they always used to call it Chucky because it looked like a blonde Chucky basically. And I've had more nightmares about that doll than anything in my life. I never had any love for it. And I mean, I don't know, maybe my hatred for it corrupted it or something and made it even worse. But it would always just sit around the house. It'd be creepy. And it always kind of freaked me out. The other doll was a more old school doll that my grandmother had. So it was like a very traditional doll with curly brown hair in a pink dress that my grandmother had gotten for my mom and her sister when they were kids. But it always, my cousins, my sisters and I always scared us. And we always just called it Demon Doll. And so, yeah, there's a long running joke in my family of like, when we were young, my grandmother didn't try to scare us with it because she wasn't a monster. But once we were old enough, my grandmother, shout out Grosie, would take the doll out of the room and hide it other places in the house. And my aunt, especially, would, Demon Dolls made appearances in Christmas presents on Zooms. Demon Doll gets like passed around. So I don't even know where she is right now. Hopefully not behind you.

Yeah, right. It would be so crazy if it just floated into frame.

But yeah, Demon Doll, Demon Doll was, I don't even know. I mean, I guess I was born in 86 and Child's Play, the first one came out in like 87, I think. So my awareness of Chucky probably started pretty young, but I think I was maybe just afraid of Demon Doll before I knew about Chucky. Well, the term for the fear of dolls that we all share is the really unfortunate sounding pediophobia, which is a branch of the larger phobia, automatonophobia, or the fear of humanoid figures. So sort of like squares and rectangles, all pediophobes are automatonophobes, but not all automatonophobes are pediophobes. And watch who you're calling a pediophobe, buddy.

Yeah. I got to see how the, I don't know, Spotify AI generated transcript does with that.

Yeah. It gets repeated a lot. So people who are automatonophobes can suffer from a fear of like mannequins or the hall of presidents at Disney, which are all very worthwhile fears, but not as specific as dolls. At their core, these fears are rooted in what a Japanese robotics engineer named Masahiro Mori deemed the Uncanny Valley in 1970. Most of you have probably heard of the Uncanny Valley at this point, because it's become a fairly popular term. But his research actually went, when I was looking this up, it surprised me, the first English translation of his research wasn't even published until 2012.

What?

So people knew of the term and it was used. But I think my theory is that as technology made things look more and more human, whether it was digital animation or robots or whatever, I assume people started using the term more and that's what made them ultimately publish it. But if you don't know the term Uncanny Valley, it describes that uncomfortable middle ground between lifelike and clearly inanimate, objects that are not quite fully human, but not quite something else either. I think we've probably spent some time on the Uncanny Valley on this show before, because it's the same principle about like why Michael Myers' mask is so frightening, because it's blank white and it seems sort of human, but not really. And I can't remember exactly where in the show we've talked about this, but we've probably discussed it. My first encounter with the term Uncanny Valley, if you're trying to imagine what this is, imagine Robert Zemeckis' mid-2000s CG movies.

Polar Express.

Like Polar Express, exactly.

Polar Express is my first, I think, real, we've nailed it. We now have an example.

Yeah, yeah.

And that was something where I've to this day never seen it, and I was the right age for it.

I've seen it, and I can only imagine that the translation for Polar Express in some foreign language must be like Train to Hell or something, because it is a weird looking movie. That and his Beowulf, and there was one or two other ones in there that, Ally, have you seen any of those Zemeckis?

I've seen Polar Express, and it is unnerving, to say the least.

Yeah. The first time I heard the term either was those, or possibly 2002, there was a Final Fantasy animated movie called The Spirits Within, that was supposed to be the first photorealistic CG animated movie, and it wasn't. They tried, but it didn't.

There was that, and then there was the short, the animatrix short that played before, I want to say, Dreamcatcher of all movies. If you went to see it in theaters, that was fully CG fight sequence that... It looked better than the fight sequences in the second Matrix, which is a little disappointing, but yeah, that's another like, we got it, guys. This is passable, right? And we're like, no.

No.

Humanity, you don't need a turning test to find out. You can just use regular ass eyeballs and be like, this is fucking, there's no way that's...

Yeah.

I mean, don't get me wrong, there will be. There's right now, people are dating AI avatars. You probably don't look much better than that.

Yeah. I mean, I definitely notice it. I don't know that even the Zavecas movies, some people do have a real physical repulsion. They cannot watch it. I recognize, I'm like, oh, that looks bizarre. If I watch the whole movie, it's like, I feel sick, I guess a little, but I'm not like, I can't watch it.

Yeah. I'm the same way. It's just extremely off-putting.

Yeah, it's off-putting.

Dead eyes.

Yeah, so crazy.

So I linked Masahiro Mori's paper, translated paper in the show notes. But the reason that it's called The Uncanny Valley is because the paper literally presents a graph. And on this graph, the horizontal axis measures the humanness of objects such as dolls, cartoons and robots on a scale from zero, which is a completely inhuman industrial robot, to 100%, which he noted as a healthy human being. And the vertical axis gauges human affinity for those objects, with the top indicating strong liking and the bottom, or some things actually dip below the bottom, indicating dislike or discomfort. What he found was that as the humanness of an object increases to around 70%, our affinity for the object rises. But then at around 80% humanness, which again, it's kind of a loose, you know, he's defined it one way with specific examples. It's not a perfect science, but around 80% humanness, our affinity for those objects plummets, but then spikes again around 90 to 100% humanness, which forms this very deep valley on the graph.

Weird.

Yeah.

Weird.

It is weird. I don't understand why it would go up again. I feel like it would plummet forever.

Well, maybe it's a, yeah, I don't know. It's got to be something to do with how healthy it looks.

Well, it's because the objects are getting more human. So obviously, we have the most affinity for a healthy human being on the far right side of the graph.

It's true. I step over unhealthy ones.

Right. They might be down there at the bottom somewhere in the bottom of the valley. So that's, I think, why it goes back up is like it's getting closer and closer to something human-like. And then there's this space between very, and I think he uses like a, there's some, I don't want to get up the paper and look through the whole thing right now, but there was some Japanese human-like doll that was the nadir of the Uncanny Valley on his chart. But like crash test dummies, I bet, are in that valley somewhere in the 70s, at least. For sure. So we know that this valley exists. We know that it creates an unsettling feeling in humans when they look at it, but why do objects in that valley create this feeling? So I did some research and I found, according to this review that was presented at the super villainy named International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, the phenomenon of the Uncanny Valley can be explained from two perspectives, one of evolutionary psychology and one of cognitive conflict. So if you branch those off, there's sort of two hypotheses on each branch. So on the evolutionary psychology perspective, there's the threat avoidance hypothesis, which posits that evolutionary pressures driven by the threats of diseases and death shape our unease with humanoid objects. So pathogen avoidance suggests imperfections in human-like entities trigger associations with diseases because you fear that that human-like entity could potentially transmit an illness. And then a term that they call mortality salience links the uncanny feeling to anxiety about death, particularly when the humanoid objects resemble deceased individuals.

Wow. Wow.

I mean, that makes sense.

Yeah. That theory is saying-

Oh, you mean deceased individuals, as in the doll looks dead or like people you personally know who are no longer with us?

No, I think they're saying, particularly if a humanoid object like a mannequin or a doll has like a glazed dead look that's- Yeah.

Now, what do you think? Do you think it's like that 80% to 100% number is like up to 80% lifelike, you're afraid of disease, but then past 95% lifelike, you're just afraid of sexually transmitted disease?

No, I think-

Like how does that work with these dolls?

I think to boil all that down, I think essentially what it's saying-

Gave me nothing. Well no, no, no, no, no.

It's fine. Basically what it's saying is that our awareness of something that looks almost human but isn't triggers a response in us that goes, hey, wait a second, maybe that thing is sick. I think essentially it looks like it could be a threat because there seems to be something wrong with it. Sure. Which I was trying to come back around to give you a good answer to your joke because I completely did cruise right on past it but.

No, it's fine. It's fine. This is a little bit of a caveman's view of realistic humanoids though. It's not, it's like what's that thing? I'll poke it with a stick. I don't want to get too close. Where I feel like a modern view of it is just maybe looking at it and going, I don't trust this. I don't think it's gross or going to get me sick but this feels like a Trojan horse. You know what I mean? Something off about you, so I have to put up my guards, I don't trust you. If you're lying to me about being a fucking human, then what else are you going to lie about? That's kind of, I feel like, the modern version of this.

Yeah, well that's why this is considered the evolutionary psychology perspective because it's the perspective that says, yes, our caveman brains probably felt this way. There's a meme that goes around alien Reddit threads and stuff of somebody saying, I'm going to completely whiff on this, but it's something about how like, what if the reason that we have the Uncanny Valley is because for a long time, our ancestors lived with something that looked like a human but wasn't? And that's an explanation for the Uncanny Valley is that our deep reptile genes.

Is a defense mechanism built in our DNA structure to keep away aliens and, honestly, fairies at this point?

Potentially, yes.

I kind of hate that theory, though, honestly.

Yeah, because it sounds so like it could have been the case.

Yeah, it does. It feels a little too accurate.

Yeah. Yeah.

I love it.

It's sort of like the opening to the X-Files movie with the cavemen who fall into the they get attacked by the alien.

Oh, yeah. And they get the ooze.

Yeah.

Fuck. That first movie is so good until it isn't.

You know, that's not wrong. It is actually I've rewatched it a number of times and I always do. There's it's nice seeing the X-Files with that big widescreen scope and the big. I love the score to that movie, hearing all the X-Files theme, like the main theme and all the other themes of the show, like performed by an orchestra.

And not just on a Casio.

Yeah.

Mark Snow's living room or whatever.

Yeah. What else did Mark Snow ever get up to?

I don't know. It's crazy to me that I remembered his name.

So yeah, I can't believe that.

That's just repetition of seeing the credits a million times.

Hold that right out of your ass.

Yeah. Yeah. So the other evolutionary psychology perspective on why we hit the Uncanny Valley is essentially the idea that physical attractiveness impacts our perception of humanoid objects. So they found that highly attractive robot images consistently receive low eeriness ratings based on traits such as symmetry, facial proportions and skin quality.

That's what I was getting to with that joke. It's like, that's why we go back up the valley. because it's like, well, now this is a viable partner.

Well, it's also a viable partner if you're asking a serial killer to judge traits such as skin quality.

You put the lotion on the skin. We've established this.

Damn, bro. Yeah. But yes, the theory is that these traits have been molded by natural selection and play a role in shaping our affinity towards almost human entities. So essentially that, yes, a more attractive robot will be less likely to fall into the uncanny valley, which I cannot believe that I have a whole new gamut of people who are going to get swiped right on before me.

Just when I thought there was already so many people ahead of me.

Yeah.

Now we've got fucking robots entering the game.

Got hot robots.

Fucking hot robots, dude.

You got to deal with hot robots, man. It's a shame.

That's going to be the button for this month.

You got to deal with the AI faces first and then hot robots. There's already the fake faces. Yeah, actually, God, that's got to be bad for dating apps right now because you could just generate endless fake people.

Yeah. That's why you should have to show your hands on dating apps because AI is not good with hands, I feel like.

That's true. I have the appropriate number of fingers. I'm not fake.

Yeah.

I mean, she seems pretty perfect, but have you seen her hands? True love, it slipped through the 19 fingers on that hand.

Then the cognitive conflict perspective presents two different hypotheses on what creates the uncanny valley. The mind perception hypothesis proposes human-like objects appear uncanny because they seem so realistic that people might think they have the ability to feel and sense like humans. However, this attribution of human-like feelings is unsettling because it goes beyond our expectations for robots. While people are comfortable with robots performing human-like tasks, the idea of them having human-like feelings creates discomfort, which is the most robotic way to possibly say that. But yes, the idea of them having human-like feelings does create discomfort in me because they would just be slaves, which wouldn't be good.

That would be bad.

Yeah, that would not be great.

And I guess that hypothesis is specifically robot-oriented, but I think it kind of translates to dolls and stuff as well because you're like, it's essentially just saying, does this thing think and feel like me or does it not? And feeling tricked that maybe it doesn't or that it does, I guess is the proper way to say that. And then finally, the violation of expectation hypothesis suggests that people have specific expectations for humanoid entities. For instance, we expect humanoid robots to move and speak smoothly like humans. However, these expectations are often violated, with robots moving mechanically and having synthetic voices. Not for long. It was another 10 years. This mismatch between expectations and reality leads to negative emotions, avoidance behaviors, and feelings of eeriness. I don't know, man. I think the solution here is just make every robot look like Wall-E. We kind of nailed it with Wall-E.

Yeah. Before that, and Wall-E is just an extension of Johnny Five.

Yeah.

So just give them that Johnny. Even Johnny Five was, per his own admission, alive. But yeah, we never were like, we didn't give a shit, people fell down the stairs, it's a bummer, but we'll build another one. You know what I mean? It's like people name their Roombas and stuff, and that's weird to me.

Do they?

Yeah, people do it. People name their Roombas. They're like, oh, that's Jerry, he's just going to clean up. No.

I'm like, what? No.

The fuck out of here. Once you start attributing your own stuff.

That seems like a weird human impulse to own a person. I need to have this thing. It's one thing, I guess, if it's like a joke with your kids or something, but to be like, oh yeah, Jerry's, you don't have to clean up, Jerry's got it. It's like.

No.

No, but.

I'm just saying it's out there, guys.

It's out there.

Or those robots that deliver stuff here in Los Angeles, the fucking little robots with the eyeballs that are expressive eyeballs that deliver.

Oh yeah. Ally, have you seen those?

I've never seen those.

Yeah. Where are you at, Ally? Where in the world?

I'm in Brooklyn.

Oh wow.

Okay. They might have them around.

I don't want to see them.

Oh, they'll see you.

I don't like their eyeballs already.

Well, they're digital eyeballs, so they could get weird and sad. No. But yeah, they're kind of wally eyes.

I've only ever seen them on Melrose.

Same.

Which is I think probably because Melrose is a long flat stretch, so it's easy to put a robot out of a restaurant and let it go. But I've never actually had something delivered by one of them. I've also heard that they are not robots and that they are actually being driven by people to train them to be robots.

Driven by people like the way a drone operator works? Yeah. There's a small person that can e-walk in there.

There's a teeny-tiny person.

Like if you fail out of drone operator school, if you're not good enough at-

Bombs strikes? Let's not go there.

I was going to say.

Now you're working for Uber Eats.

Yeah, to Uber Eats. But yeah, I don't know if they're robots or if they're still being trained. But either way, it seems like such an inefficient way to do anything. To put the food in a little thing and then send it down the street. It can't go up and down stairs.

Right.

All it does is drive and then stop and then, I don't know. I don't see the appeal.

Yeah, like if you have front steps, it's just going to sit on the sidewalk then.

Maybe it has a horn.

You got to listen for the tune.

Yeah, it's tooting out there.

Well, they all have names. I mean, they have little name tags on them that say like what the robot's name is.

And I think that's to bring this back to what you were talking about. I don't know, if you add like human elements to it, they like the robot more. I think that it's maybe like, listen, someone's going to just kick this over and steal all the food. But if we give it an expressive face and we give it a name, maybe it'll give someone like one minute's pause to be like, well, I don't want to kick this adorable little human over and break it open and steal its pinata treats. Like honestly, I think if they make it cute and they make it human-like, that maybe it'll just stop crime against it.

We'll accept them more potentially, but-

Ally came here for dolls.

Ally came here for dolls, yeah. We're going down. Robots will be a different episode because I'm now thinking of other robot stuff to talk about.

100 percent.

While The Uncanny Valley goes a long way to explaining the root cause of pediophobia, I don't think it's the complete explanation. I don't think we're afraid of dolls just because they sit in The Uncanny Valley. I think there is a huge cultural component to our fear of dolls too, which is a bit of a chicken or the egg question because it's like, did we start making media and telling stories about creepy dolls because of The Uncanny Valley or did the stories draw our attention to the effect and compound it? As I was looking for answers to this question, I kept getting pointed to an article from Smithsonian Magazine written July 15th, 2015 by Linda Rodriguez McRobbie. It does a really fantastic job of digging into the cultural history of our fear of dolls. I'll be quoting from it fairly extensively to guide our discussion here. But according to the article, dolls have been a part of human play for thousands of years. In 2004, a 4,000-year-old stone doll was unearthed in an archaeological dig on the Mediterranean island of Pantelleria. That illustrates the power these stories hold over us because my first thought is, put it back. Put the fucking 4,000-year-old doll back. No good can come of that. But the article continues that the British Museum, quote, has several examples of ancient Egyptian rag dolls made of papyrus-stuffed linen. Over millennia, toy dolls cross continents and social strata were made from sticks and rags, porcelain and vinyl and had been found in the hands of children everywhere. And by virtue of the fact that dolls are people in miniature, unanimated by their own emotions, it's easy for a society to project whatever it wanted onto them. Just as much as they could be made out of anything, they could be made into anything. So that's the first angle that this article explores. Not the aesthetic discomfort inherent in dolls, but the psychological one. And I think, Ally, it kind of speaks to what your book is about. Not that the doll is made out of a person, but that the metaphor is that you're projecting these ideas about death onto them, which I think is pretty cool. The article continues, I think there's quite a tradition of using dolls to reflect cultural values and how we see children or who we wish them to be, says Patricia Hogan, curator at the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, and associate editor of a very fun sounding publication, The American Journal of Play.

Huh, that sounds like Pokey would be the editor, like Gumby or Pokey would be the editor.

Yeah, this fact kind of blew my mind. She says, by the end of the 19th century, many parents no longer saw their children as unfinished adults, but rather regarded childhood as a time of innocence that ought to be protected. And the reason that blew my mind is because I doubt that either of the three of us or many of the people listening to this show experienced childhood as unfinished adults. It's just baked into the fabric of life that childhood is a time of innocence that ought to be protected. But that wasn't the case until very recently. I mean, Ed, I know your dad was a plumber. Did he try to make you lead the plumbing life at seven years old?

He didn't, but I wish he had, honestly. If I had gone into plumbing instead of screenwriting, we'd all be hanging out at a house I own right now. I wish he had, honestly. I wish he wouldn't let me be a kid.

My parents were pretty strict and didn't really glamorize childhood, but even they gave me plenty of space to be a kid. Ally, what was your childhood like? Was it protected? Was it a safe?

Yeah. I mean, absolutely. I grew up in a small town in the Hudson Valley, so I had full range.

Yeah.

I could go wherever I want. I was in the woods all of the time. Same. When it was time, I'd be down at my friend's house. When it was time for me to come home, my mother would literally just yell out the door. She would just yell my name and be like, oh, I got to go. Must be dinner time.

Yeah. Same. My dad had that thing he can do where he can put his fingers in his mouth and do the loudest whistle.

The loudest whistle, yeah.

So we'd hear the big whistle and then we'd be like, got to go, guys.

Yeah. I had a lot of freedom as a kid and I definitely felt like my parents thought it was important that I had a joyful childhood. I mean, me and my sisters, we had a lovely childhood.

That's awesome. I mean, I feel like a lot of people who, well, I mean, writing sometimes comes from places of great pain, but I also think it comes from people who had the ability and the space to develop an imagination. Exactly. If you didn't, it's very like you have to have the ability to spend that time in your head and in wherever to have those ideas and tell those stories. Anyway, this turn towards childhood innocence is what prompted dolls to become more cherubic and angelic looking. And, to my mind, upped the uncanny valley factor because before they looked like cute little kids or whatever, or before they looked that real, they were less uncanny. The article tells us that dolls also have an instructional function. This also I thought was crazy. Often reinforcing gender norms, yes, and social behavior, through the 18th and 19th century, dressing up dolls gave little girls the opportunity to learn to sew or knit. Hogan says girls also used to act out social interactions with their dolls. Not only classic tea parties, but also more complicated social rituals such as funerals.

Oh, amazing.

Which is amazing and nightmarish in and of itself. A bunch of like, can you imagine a bunch of Victorian girls acting out a funeral with their dolls?

I can very much imagine that.

Yeah, I can imagine that.

I actually love that.

Yeah, doll funerals. I kind of wish those had caught on more than the tea party. Right?

Well, the tea party, I don't know how far they go into the funeral. Maybe you have to be wealthy. It's like you have to actually bury the doll and then someone gives you a new one. Where maybe like everyone in every socioeconomic class could have the tea party and then go back to owning it.

That's true. Or too many people were just walking in on their children holding funerals for dolls and they were like, Nope!

But I mean, thank God, thank God we got her into dolls that she learned to sew because she made her own black veil. Yeah. To wear at this doll tea.

Yeah. She's really talented. She stitched me my own personal death mask for what they put me in the ground, so.

Oh my God. Also, it might have been the origin of pouring one out for somebody when they die, if they pour out a little fake tea. So you can blend the two things they've learned at that point.

So dolls, without meaning to, mean a lot. But one of the more relatively recent ways you relate to dolls is as strange objects of, and this is a totally scientific term, creepiness. Research into why we think things are creepy and what potential use that might have is somewhat limited, but it does exist. Creepy, in the modern sense of the word, has been around since the middle of the 19th century. Its first appearance in The New York Times was in an 1877 reference to a story about a ghost. And in 2013, Frank McAndrew, who is a psychologist at Knox College in Illinois, and Sarah Kenke, a graduate student, put out a small paper on their working hypothesis about what creepiness means. The paper was based on the results of a survey of more than 1300 people investigating what creeped them out. And wouldn't you know it, collecting dolls was named as one of the creepiest hobbies.

Oh my God. All these Tik Tokers think that like making a list of fucking Ick or whatever is new. Like that's, well, there's been people at a scientific place being like, who do I not want to date for a long time? Like they've been trying to get to the bottom of this for a minute.

I also wonder if that's changing, though, because Funko Pops are like a bazillion dollar industry and no, they're they're going under. Oh, they are.

They're like four years into like falling apart financially. Yeah.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. They bought Mondo, too, which is all fucked up. And then then they immediately went under.

Do you wait? Why are they going under?

I don't know. Fucking Google it. I just feel like I feel like it's I feel like what I'm saying is not inaccurate.

No, I feel like considering the number of pops that I've bought, how is it possible that they're going?

Well, yeah, I think that, yeah, I was like, I've been keeping them afloat. Yeah, that's the problem.

I literally have my shelves. I'm like, there's a lot of you.

Yeah.

I literally have a thing of Funko Pop protectors next to me. So I don't want I don't want to be the one telling you this, but I think they are at least last or two years ago. They were they were in dire straits, I feel like.

OK, so Ed's claims of Funko, quote, going under may just be a vibes thing. But further research shows that Funko's stock was around $27 per share in summer 2022 when they bought Mondo and just under $6 per share the following summer. As of this summer, it was around $7 per share after laying off 12 percent of its workforce and the president resigning. So it's not the craziest thing. Ed's ever said.

My question about it was just like culturally, because they've become such a cultural force. Like, I wonder. This was in 2013 that they did this study. But I'd be curious to know if collecting dolls.

American Girl dolls.

Yeah, that's true.

People collect a show of those. They like eat fake fucking food with them.

Yeah. But my point is, I guess, even if you did this again and said collecting dolls, most people wouldn't think Funko dolls. They'd be thinking creepy Victorian baby dolls.

Yeah. Yeah. Funko is a figurine.

Yeah, that's more of a figurine than a doll.

That's true. That's true. Yeah, I guess it's also like you wouldn't think of like beanie babies weren't dolls, but they were collectibles. Anyway, we're not talking about robots. We're not talking about collectibles. We're talking about dolls. Creepiness, McAndrew says, comes down to uncertainty. Quote, you're getting mixed messages. If something is clearly frightening, you scream, you run away. If something is disgusting, you know how to act, he explains. But if something is creepy, it might be dangerous, but you're not sure. There's an ambivalence. If someone is acting outside of accepted social norms, standing too close or staring, we become suspicious of their intentions.

This seems like it was written before we recognized maybe people on the spectrum.

No, I, it's cool.

It's good.

In the absence of real evidence of a threat, we wait and in the meantime, call them creepy, which I guess maybe to Ed's point, we shouldn't be just calling people creepy. We should be curious about their intentions and not.

Absolutely not. No, I think it's good to have a baseline creepy line in the sand.

Yeah, I'm with Ed on this one.

Yeah, it's what kept us still alive in major cities.

Yeah, I was going to say, that's when I know when to leave the subway car and get in the next one.

Exactly, dude. You got to have a little bit of that or else you're in trouble.

Yeah, I guess I don't have that. I should. One time.

It's nice knowing you.

Well, this is a story that even now, a few years later, I look back and I'm like, ah, I don't know what I was. I was trying to be a good Samaritan.

Put the hat on your fucking tombstone, dude.

I know, I know. I was at a red light in LA and this guy, I saw this guy run past my car on the left, like down the sidewalk on the other side of the street and around the corner. And this guy was chasing him. And my girlfriend at the time was in the car with me. And I was like, Oh my God, did you see that? I think that guy was getting like chased. And then while we were still at the light, the guy who was getting chased came back around the building and started running towards the car. And he was like, Hey, hey, hey, can you help me? Can you help me? And I was just like, Yeah, sure, get in. And so he jumped in the back seat.

Oh, my God.

And we like took off and he smelled pretty bad.

Oh, good.

But I was like, I was like, what's wrong, man? And he was like, I was in line at McDonald's and this guy, he just started giving me a hard time and we got in a fight and now he wants to kill me. And I was like, Oh, well, do you need to go to like a hospital? I was like, I didn't. I acted before I thought what to do with the man who is now in my car. And then he was like, no, no, no, just bring me up a few blocks. It's fine. And then when he got out, though, he was like really nice about it. He was like, thanks so much. People don't usually help people. And I was like, yeah, no problem. But in hindsight, I'm like, that could have really gone pretty bad.

That could have gone real bad.

That worked out for you. But I couldn't help but notice you said my girlfriend at the time. So is that the end of that relationship? You put me in a real jam here. I'm in the bathroom seat mouthing, no, no, no, don't do this. And then you just still did it.

No, she never let it go, though.

I bet.

She was always like, remember that time? Anyway, what were you talking about? Oh, yeah. Creepiness. Essentially, creepiness is the result of our brain trying to figure out if something is a fight or flight situation. We can't ascertain what it is about something. And dolls inhabit this area of uncertainty, largely because they look human, even though we know they are not. Our brains are designed to read faces for important information about intentions, emotions and potential threats. And indeed, we are so primed to see faces and respond to them that we see them everywhere. In streaked windows, in smears of marmite. So whoever wrote this, I guess, was British, Australian.

It's funny. You said my mom just sent me a text, I swear to God, yesterday, where she sent me as a picture of a mushroom. Like she was cooking and she said, this mushroom has a face and it did. I mean, it had a little eye, it did look like it. But just to your point where we just see ourselves and everything.

That's called, what is that called?

Yeah.

Something like that.

Yeah. Periodelia.

It's the because I have it really bad. I see faces in everything.

Oh, OK.

So I have a question. If it's just looking human is what makes it creepy. Why don't we find statues creepy?

Oh, shit.

Like I don't find a statue creepy. I find a doll creepy.

That's true.

That's true.

It's weird.

Yeah, I guess we don't have enough media about like statues other than, I guess.

Right.

See, this is Ghostbusters 2 maybe is the last statue I saw walking around.

That episode of Doctor Who with the angel statues.

I don't know. I'm not that nerdy. I would never know that.

Blink or something where like if you close your eyes and when you open them, they move closer.

But yes, it's Blink.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I am that nerdy.

Yeah.

OK, shit. All right.

Well, got it.

Megalopolis has a statue coming out, guys.

So no, that's a good point. I mean, I guess I've seen statues that creep me out, but maybe that might be part of the cultural aspect of like we're raised to think of statues as objects of art. And maybe that like has an effect on us that we don't look at them as like they're filed away differently, sort of.

And the representations of humans no different than looking at a portrait where we know that that's someone's likeness, presumably, that has been cast, not even cast like a death mask. But yeah, you know what I mean? There's just like we just that's art, baby. I guess that's what you're just saying. Yeah, it's art. It's not. Yeah, it's not trying to pass as anything other than art.

I'm trying to think of the creepiest statue I've ever seen.

I'm sure Ally has unlimited time.

Don't worry. This will only take a couple of hours. No, I don't. There isn't one that jumps to mind, but I'm sure I'm sure there are some. But yes, Ally, it is Paradolia.

Yeah, I don't know how to say it.

That is the term for when we see faces everywhere. I don't know. I don't have it really. I mean, I see them. It sounds like you definitely see it everywhere.

I also do.

For both of you then, the thing that came to mind when I read that was, I have vague memories of a Twilight Zone episode. I think it was definitely one of the reboots. I don't remember which one. Whatever was in the late 80s or early 90s, Twilight Zone of a woman who suffers from pareidolia, but the faces that she's seeing are actually demons or something. They put her in a mental hospital because they think that they're like, hey, don't worry about it. You're just, this is a normal thing.

It's not that normal. They put her in a fucking mental hospital.

She like did something.

Hey, don't worry about it. Maybe there are bugs.

She went crazy because of it. And then at the end, I think one of the faces comes zooming out of the wall. I barely remember it, but I remember it really scaring me. And I started to be on the lookout for faces in things. So Ally, is there anything, are there any particular stories you have about that, about seeing faces in things?

I mean, not really. It's just an annoying thing that I would point out to whoever's with me, and they're like, shut up. I'm like, look, it looks like a face. They're like, shut up.

No, that's where I'm at. I'm the same thing where it's as simple as what we all do, which is like electric socket looks like a face with the two eyes. But like, yeah, same thing. It's just all the fucking time. It's like, look at those three pipes. That's a nose, isn't it? Look at this thing.

Especially like patterns in tiles. I'm like, oh, look, a face, a face. And everyone's like, shut up, Ally. Just shut up.

No, you're helping make sure you're keeping an eye out for the face demons. I have that a little bit. I think I have it almost more with audio or maybe I'm just schizophrenic. But sometimes when water trickles into like, from a sink into like a bowl that already has water in it, I hear voices in that sometimes.

Oh, what?

Not saying anything.

That's not what we have.

No, I know, but I'm just saying it's... Not saying anything.

That would terrify me.

Yeah, forget that.

It's not saying anything specific. It's not like when the water trickles, I hear something be like, kill your whole family.

No, it just...

Yeah, it just sounds like distant chatter sometimes to me.

No, no, no.

That would torture me. No, couldn't handle it.

That sucks. Chris is having a kid soon. It sounds like you're gonna pass that horrible trait on.

Yeah, he's gonna have a fear of trickling water. We'll do that as an episode. Some researchers, to get back to the article and away from my mental illnesses, some researchers also believe that a level of mimicry of non-verbal cues, such as hand movements or body language, is fundamental to smooth human interaction. The key is that it has to be the right level of mimicry, too much or too little, and we get creeped out by it. In a study published in Psychological Science in 2012, researchers from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands found that inappropriate non-verbal mimicry produced a physical response in the creeped out subject. They felt chills. Dolls don't have the ability to mimic, although they do seem to have the ability to make eye contact. But because at least some part of our brain is suspicious about whether this is human or not, we may expect them to mimic, but they don't, which further confuses things. In any case, the article says that doll manufacturers figured out how to better manipulate materials to make dolls look more lifelike or to develop mechanisms that make them appear to behave in ways that humans behave. Says one expert, pointing to the sleep eye innovation in the early 1900s, where the doll would close her eyes when laid horizontal, which I'm sure made doll funerals even cooler.

Oh my God, what a lunatic. I don't think the mid 1800s maybe had boardrooms the way we do now, but somebody had to pitch that, where they were like, what if when it lays down, it looks more dead?

Well, it looks asleep, I think is the...

I think the kids will like that. You see, they're doing funerals every fucking day. They're doing funerals. This is the shit they want. We put out feelers and this is what we're getting back.

Yeah, Market Research says...

Yeah, they says that little boys and girls, well, maybe just to get that time, 1800s, I guess we were just little girls, but who were allowed to fill out the cards once they taught them how to write. They're saying that the illusion of the funeral is broken every time they lay them down and their eyes are still open.

I guess.

Oh, are we going to move on from that? because I have a question. I have a thing about clowns I want to discuss. Are we going to get to clowns?

No, clowns aren't dolls, so we're not getting to clowns.

No, no, I know, but it's interesting. So I would like to just quickly bring up...

Go ahead. Ed, you have the floor.

In our clowns episode, one of the things that makes clowns very fucking creepy, and in this case mimes, is that they wear face paint. It's uncanny because we can't read their facial cues, so we're distrustful of them. And then if you add a thing like a mime, like they were saying, if a person mimics without talking your actions, you get all freaked out by it. And so there's an interesting thing that there's like the same level of cognitive issue of like dolls and mimes and just fucking people being weird.

Yeah.

Is a problem.

Yeah. Well.

Social contract. Don't be fucking weird.

A problem that dolls have that mimes don't is that there's an expert in the piece that's quoted as saying, the dolls don't age well. I think anytime that a doll really tried to look like a human being and now is 100 years old, the hair is decaying, the eyes don't work anymore. So it looks as much like a baby as possible, but like an ancient baby. Which is an objectively hilarious and scary thing to say.

That is a baby where if you pull its string, it's like, kill me now. I've been here too long.

Yeah. Although I guess I teed that up by saying that it's a problem that dolls have that mimes don't. But I guess mimes also, once they're 100 years old, their hair is decaying and their eyes don't work anymore either. So the article, now, I didn't know anything about this, and maybe we'll approach this subject with kid gloves because they don't know the whole context for it. But the article also talks about a line of dolls called Reborn dolls. Ally, have you heard of these?

No, I have not.

Okay. And Ed, I assume you haven't either.

No.

Okay. So Reborn dolls are custom crafted infant dolls that Reborn artists and makers say, you can quote, love forever. The more lifelike an infant doll is, and some of them even boast heartbeats, breathing motions, and cooing, the more desirable it is among Reborn devotees. But equally, the article says, the more it seems to repulse the general public.

I have an immediate question. Yes. Is this born, no pun intended, of families dealing with SIDS or something?

That's what I was wondering.

And then they get to a replacement baby?

Yeah, that's why I was saying we could be a little kid gloves with it, because there is some whole lot. I'm going to send you guys the website.

All right. Yeah, I'm sure this is going to go over well. All right, I'm opening the website.

Oh, no.

Oh, yeah. So count me among the repulsed.

I don't like this. I don't just for the for the listener at home. They're very realistic. They're like some of these kids have this is like if you were making a movie and you like, I don't know, the baby that walked on the ceiling and train spotting. Yeah, it's kind of that.

Hazel is terrifying.

Hazel doesn't look healthy. Hazel has a green pallor about her face.

I don't know if it's good or bad that they're so expensive.

Oh my God, they are.

Some of them, they're between hundreds to thousands of dollars. And I think it's kind of like, if this is like, I need a replacement baby, maybe it's a little bit like, hey, I bought a Lamborghini and I took all the seats out and I've converted them into wicker chairs and I've replaced all the radios with, I don't know, every station just plays the sound of screams. Like for you, that's great. But reselling that is impossible. And so maybe if they are making specifically like someone's dead kid, it might be like, listen, we gotta charge a lot because we can't like make multiple of these and move them.

Well, no, I don't think these are anyone's specific child.

Are you kidding me? What maniac made some of these that isn't working off a reference?

I mean, some of them really do look like, like really, really look like kids.

Well, they look really real, but I don't know that it, I mean, I guess it's possible that they like.

Why would they have names otherwise? This one has a social security number, it looks like.

They're just selling them to people who like, oh my God, Simone. No, do you guys see Simone on the-

Was the end of your sentence going to be they're selling them to people who just like this type of fucking baby doll?

Yes.

because that's a new list we need to as a society make.

No, that's-

So we know where they're around.

They are, they are. So, okay, for the listener, this website, if you open this in a coffee shop, someone would tell you to get on the ground and you would be under citizens' arrest because it looks like you're just buying babies on the internet. They look very real.

Yeah, this looks like around the Silk Road of babies. I should have had to use Tor to open this.

Yeah.

I probably should have, honestly.

And somehow they all managed to look more lifelike than the baby in American Sniper.

Okay, we are going to move on from this or get to whatever this is going to, but the first hyperlink on this website is a sentence that says, Our Stance on Authentic and Non-Authentic Dolls. So I kind of need to know what the definitions of those are.

Well, when you click it, it just says, they only allow authentic reborn dolls to be sold on their platform. I don't know what makes it.

Oh, so you're saying there's like wish.com versions of these. It just looked like dog shit.

I guess.

And it's like, listen, if you open up a reborn doll and it looks like a fucking Caillou drawing or whatever, like this is not an official reborn.

Yeah, but even worse, there's like a pre-owned section. So like, how did that work? Oh, you returned the baby.

Yeah.

Oh, it didn't look enough. It didn't look enough like the kid we lost.

I mean, this this is absurd.

And oh, my God, Pika. Some of these are like designed to have like anime eyes, but they also look real except for the yep, the weird exaggerated eyeballs.

Pika's awful.

Pika's awful. Pika's awful.

Came out of a Pokeball.

Oh, my God. Mellie has like a broken neck. This one girl's head is that's not an angle that a human's head goes at. Did you?

Oh, are you looking at Miley?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I clocked that nightmare pretty early on. Right next to Little Lady.

Little Lady is awful.

Little Lady looks like a fucking man, by the way. Little Lady looks like a small sumo wrestler.

We need to do a whole episode just on these dolls.

This has got to be a fucking a premium thing where we'll just rate Reborn dolls.

Yeah. But anyway, so just to back up a little bit here.

Please.

There does seem to be some genuine therapeutic use for these dolls in the case of women who suffer pregnancy or who suffer loss during pregnancy, like miscarriages. But the reason that I'm comfortable laughing about all this is because there is 100% just a fandom for these things that seems unhealthy. There's a quote in the article, quote, in AF. Robertson's 2004 investigation into doll collecting.

Investigation is the right word.

Yeah. I want to know if it resulted in any arrests. Life like dolls, the collector doll phenomenon and the lives of women who love them is the name of his investigation. Some of the women who collected porcelain dolls thought of their dolls as alive, as sentient beings with feelings and emotions. These women who referred to their doll collections as quote, nurseries were sometimes shunned by other antique doll collectors who did not have the same relationship with their own dolls. Women, the article says, it is almost exclusively women who collect Reborns.

That admit to collecting Reborns. This is a huge distinction.

Yeah. But people who collect Reborns often treat them as they would real babies. Some psychologists have talked about Reborns as quote, transition objects for people dealing with loss or anxiety, which again, not surprising. And then the article goes on to say, Freud may have argued that all children wish their dolls could come to life, but even so, it's not socially acceptable for adults to entertain the same desire. But my issue with these Reborn dolls isn't that you want them to be real so much as it is everything else about them. I don't like, it's just, it's super Uncanny Valley. It's super, I'd imagine, unhealthy for 95% of the people who collect these. But yeah, so that's Reborn dolls, the scariest dolls in the world.

Which is crazy because we've entered this episode thinking like, man, the scariest doll I'm going to see or talk about is going to be like a Victorian, weird, cracked porcelain, you know, head turns around on its own doll.

Right.

And the reality is I just learned about a doll way fucking scarier than all of those.

Yes, yeah. And a doll that almost certainly will not have a horror movie produced about it unless it's some sort of like A24, Ari Aster kind of very just deeply emotionally disturbing horror movie. And I think that's maybe a good segue into a discussion of creepy doll media, because nothing is more to blame for our cultural fears around creepy dolls than the media.

You hear that, Ally? You're about to pile onto this.

That's what I'm here for.

I don't just mean modern media either. According to the Smithsonian article, artists and writers have been exploring the horror of dolls since the 18th and 19th century, again, prompted somewhat by these dolls becoming more realistic. The tales of German writer ETA. Hoffman, who wrote The Nutcracker, itself a living doll story, his tales are widely seen as the beginning of the creepy automaton slash doll genre, and his story The Sandman is often pointed to as a case study in The Uncanny. I'd never read The Sandman. Ally, have you?

Um, no. Not to my knowledge.

This is the German writer, The Sandman?

Yeah, ETA. Hoffman. I'd never heard of him before. I mean, I'd heard of The Nutcracker, but I couldn't have told you who wrote it. So this is, I bring this up because apparently this is one of the earliest creepy doll stories, although I think it's very loosely creepy doll story. The story published in 1816 involves a traumatized young man who discovers that the object of his affection is in fact a clever wind-up doll. The work of a sinister alchemist who may or may not have murdered the young man's father and it drives him mad. The horror in this story turned on the deceptive attractiveness of the girl rather than any innate murderousness in her. For the 19th century, the article notes that creepy doll stories tended to be about the malevolence of the maker more than the doll itself.

Oh, interesting.

Which is interesting because by the 20th century, creepy dolls became much more actively homicidal. And much less about the malevolence of the maker.

Yeah, it went from automatons to having just agency on their own.

Yeah, some evil dolls still had an evil human behind them. I've never seen Devil Doll, which is Todd Browning's movie, the guy who directed Dracula. But that features Lionel Barrymore as a man wrongly convicted of murder who turns two living humans into doll-sized assassins to wreck his revenge on the men who framed him.

Oh shit, it's like original Puppet Master.

Yeah, that's got to go on the list. So I have a whole list of creepy doll media to talk about, but Ally, you're the guest here. So what is your favorite creepy doll story?

Oh, definitely Shucky.

Okay. Oh, right. That's right. You mentioned that at the top.

Yeah, Child's Blood, definitely.

Have you seen the whole franchise? There's a lot now.

No, I have not seen the whole franchise, but I did watch the new TV show, which I loved.

Yeah. Shout out Nick Ziegler, one of my buddies wrote on that show.

Oh, yeah?

Yeah, he had a really good time doing it.

Yeah, it was great.

I loved it. I wish they'd kept it going. Chucky, I find super interesting on so many levels. I mean, great villain design, great villain performance, and such a wild, like the series itself is totally different from beginning to end, but mostly it's happened under the guidance of, what's his name? Don Mancini. Don Mancini has led the charge on the Chucky franchise for like two decades now, I think. Like he wrote the original and then Tom Holland directed it, but then after that, I think Don got pretty involved. So it's mostly been like his vision for, and it's very internally consistent, which is cool. Like there's not a lot of retconning in that franchise. It just kind of each one spins off into the next. Ed, what about you? Favorite scary doll stuff besides Annabelle?

Just the doll in Poltergeist, I guess.

OK.

Yeah. Well, there's just which has no I don't know its intention. It's just and then, yeah, I don't know fucking the bad toys in Small Soldiers. I don't know.

Yeah, I wanted to put Small Soldiers on this little list here.

But then I was like, they're not technically dolls.

They're actually toys. And it's not really all that scary. Speaking of the or not speaking of, but as I mentioned, I have a creepy ventriloquist doll over my shoulder.

Sure.

There is a whole subgenre of creepy ventriloquist doll movies. Some of which I knew, some of which I had no idea. So in 1929, there was a mad ventriloquist movie called The Great Gabbo, which sounds like kind of a disaster. It was like an early talkie that was an attempt at like a dramatic musical. So it's essentially it sounds like it is a dramatic horror story interspersed with these musical numbers, but they hadn't quite figured out like the right ratio of like story to musical in like a talkie. So it's just sort of this overly long and weird movie about a ventriloquist with anger issues who could only express kindness through his dummy.

Oh, weird.

Which is an interesting and verge. Usually it's the other way around. So again, I guess they were figuring it out. They were like, how could we make this work? Oh, what if he's only nice to his dummy? And I bet the minute that movie came out, the writer was like, damn it, I should have gone the other way with it. Dead of Night came out in 1945. And I think it's one of Scorsese's scariest, or one of the movies that Scorsese lists as the scariest movie he's ever seen. And that has a very creepy evil dummy in it. My favorite is 1978's Magic, starring Anthony Hopkins.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, isn't, what's his name? No, I'm thinking of Terror Train, but yeah, go ahead.

I love Magic partially because Anthony Hopkins, in certain shots in that movie looks frequently like me in college dresses.

So obviously no one gets laid in this movie.

Well, that's kind of the whole, it's kind of the whole plot of the movie, sort of.

Oh, there you go.

There's a, it's a little incelly, but it's about a ventriloquist who's either going mad or being driven mad by his dummy. But yeah, his, his outfits and just his general hair style and demeanor in that movie. I'm like, oh, I feel seen. And then RL. Stine, of course, took the trope of killer dummies and ran with it in his Night of the Living Dummy Goosebumps books, which turned Slappy the dummy into the mascot of the entire franchise, which Slappy is sort of an interesting character. Ally, I know you said you were a little too old for them, but he's sort of like a toned down Chucky. Like Stine wasn't really doing anything new with the idea of a scary ventriloquist doll, but he does have his own sort of, I guess, like cruel charm about him. So The Twilight Zone got in on the dummy action too. They have a great episode called The Dummy, but their most famous talking doll. Have you guys seen the Talkie Tina episode?

Yes.

Oh, yeah. Twilight Zone. That's the most I think up there with Chucky probably for most people is Talkie Tina. Even if they've never seen the episode, I feel like it just like got into pop culture. The Talkie Tina episode.

Yeah. What if your toy was an asshole? That's basically how that was pitched.

Yeah.

To Serling on the train from Westport to New York.

Apparently, I didn't know this. This is one of those like cultural blind spots for me. But according to the research that I did, one of the most popular and influential dolls of the 20th century was a doll called Chatty Cathy, which I'd never heard of. And apparently, Talkie Tina was a riff on Chatty Cathy. Ally, do you know anything about Chatty Cathy?

I think Chatty Cathy is the first doll that spoke.

Nice.

That Talking Tina is definitely a riff on her.

Did anyone see Toy Story 4? They had the ventriloquist dummy like enforcers at the antique store.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, those were great. They did a great job with those.

Yeah. Now we get into the 1980s and 90s, which saw dozens of B-movie variations on the homicidal doll theme. And this is right up Ed's alley. Ally, Ally, Ally, Ally, Ally. Ed's alley, Ally, is schlock movies. Which, Ed, you have a very specific definition of what counts as a schlock movie.

Yeah, we don't have to get into it here, but I do.

Well, you should share it so Ally knows what it is.

Oh, I mean, like I might put things on a schlock movie that you'd be like, that's a real movie. But I just have parameters about like anything made from 1979 to 1994 that wasn't made bad on purpose and it can't be family oriented or comedy. It's pretty much pretty much it.

Right. So let's see if any of these would fall into schlock or if you've seen them. Stuart Gordon's Dolls.

I have to check my list. I probably saw it.

Okay. Well, the Puppet Master series you've seen.

Yes, which some people wouldn't consider schlock, but I technically count as schlock for me. Yeah.

I think any Charles Band movie would count as schlock. Well, I guess Evil Bong is made purposely funny so it wouldn't.

That's what I'm saying. I can't have that shit.

Right. Now I know. There's also Dolly Dearest, Demonic Toys, Blood Dolls. There's a whole run of them, Ed. You may have seen some of them. I don't know. I think it's fun for anybody who's a horror fan. Dip into the 80s doll schlock. There's some really bizarre movies in there. I think there's so many of them because dolls were like a cheap special effect. Even if you couldn't afford good animatronics, you could afford cheap doll animatronics. Then, of course, we cannot talk about scary dolls without talking about James Wan. Most people probably know him as the director of The Conjuring, the first two Conjuring movies and the creator of that franchise. I think James Wan has actually made a career out of creepy dolls more than he's made a career out of ghost stories. Here's why. His first movie was Saw, which featured Billy, the puppet on the tricycle that comes out. And even though Billy's not the actual villain, I think Billy was more iconic than John Kramer, who actually made the traps. Billy was the thing that got on all the posters and had its creepy spiral cheeks. But then the second movie that James Wan made was a movie called Dead Silence. Have you guys seen Dead Silence?

I have not.

It's not one of his better movies, but it is if you like creepy dolls, it's very much worth watching and it's very interesting to see. It introduces the same kind of like it takes the creepy doll stuff from Saw and then introduces a gothic ghost story around it, which is what a lot of what James's career would become. So it's a nice combo of those tastes.

But then before you move on from that, did you say that Saw dummy is named Billy?

Isn't it?

Yeah, I'm just telling you that according to the Wikipedia for Dead Silence, the ventriloquist doll the family receives is called Billy. So this guy's got a Billy fetish.

He's got a Billy fetish.

Yeah. Oh, I never even put two and two together. Yeah, you're right. That's crazy.

I'm looking at you're too close to too near it, bro. I looked at it from the...

But okay, but then so here's the continuation of James Wan's doll career.

His Billy verse?

He does Billy, the Billy verse, and then he does Dead Silence. And then he had a couple of movies that were not horror movies. But then he came to Insidious, which didn't feature any creepy dolls. But the Conjuring would spin off the Annabelle franchise. And he wrote and produced 2022's Megan, which is also a killer doll movie.

I love Megan.

Megan was great.

I was my only knock on Megan is just like Megan's are really good. I think even though it might technically be rated R, I feel like it's almost like it's not super violent. It's not super scary. It's a really great kind of like maybe not someone's first horror movie, but it's close. It's like in that and it's just so the guy who directed that made a movie called Housebound years ago. And I was always like, what's going to happen to that? because Housebound I loved and he just brought such a weird angle and voice and like everything about Megan could have gone so horribly wrong, you know, but like he managed to find a way to make the life size animatronic girl who kind of dances and everything like her dances are amazing. So yeah, James Wan, the doll master. And then the last thing I wanted to bring up as a doll media is Stephen King wrote a scary doll episode of The X-Files.

Oh, well, I didn't know that.

I didn't know that either.

Yeah. It's called Chinga, which apparently the lore goes, no one knew that that was a swear word in Spanish until after they released the episode.

Oh, wow.

But if you haven't seen it, I won't spoil it. I remember it as a kid because it had some of the more violent stuff I'd seen on the show. And it does, it takes place in Maine. It feels very Stephen King. There's some debate on the Internet as to how much King actually, how much of his draft made it to the episode and how much of it was rewritten by Chris Carter. We may never know. But yeah, he wrote a creepy doll episode of The X-Files, and there's some creepy stuff in it. So if you haven't seen it, go check it out. And yeah, I won't say anything else about it because I don't want to spoil it.

Okay.

But that takes us to the last section of the show, which is real life scary dolls. Now, there's a real life scary doll, Ally, that you mentioned when we were emailing that creeps you out. And I hadn't, I never heard of it, but I added it to the show because you mentioned it. So let's talk about Okiku.

So Okiku is a Japanese doll. A brother bought it for his little sister. And she loved this doll more than anything. And she took it everywhere and it was her favorite thing in the whole world. And then she got very sick and she passed away three years old. So the family built a shrine to her and they put the doll up on the shrine. And they started to notice whenever they would go to the altar and pray for her, that the doll's hair, which was in a short bob, was has grown. So the hair started growing and the hair felt real. And they were like, it's our daughter. She's in the doll. So that's how they treated the doll from then on. And apparently also it grew teeth, which is my favorite part.

That's so disturbing because either it grew teeth, which is horrifying, or they got those teeth from somewhere. Which is also horrifying. No good.

When they thought it might be their daughter, did they take it home with them or did they just left it at the place?

No, it was in their house.

Oh, the shrine is in the home?

Yes, it was like a shrine they built in the home.

It's a fucking Hey Arnold shrine. Oh my God.

Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Okay, cool.

Okay, well they deserve what was coming for them in fucking building shrines.

Is this a recent story or did this happen a long time ago?

I don't actually remember that. I'm not sure.

Okay.

I'm not sure. I just love the teeth thing.

That is so crazy. Yeah, I don't even.

The teething is.

I don't even know because then, I don't know what you believe. It's my daughter's in a doll now. It's. I guess that just writes off the afterlife.

Yeah, yeah.

Does the doll, does she want to be in a doll?

Great question.

Does she need teeth? Do we need teeth after we die? Is that like a thing we've discovered here?

Well, it almost reminds me of like those stories of, you know, like statues of Christ that start bleeding at the in the palms and stuff, you know, like there's that.

Stigmata dolls.

There's that sort of supernatural, I don't know, it just something about it feels right that these inanimate objects would take on the appearances or the wounds or hair or teeth of people that they're associated with.

So any vessel in a storm, I guess.

Yeah.

Put your soul into that.

That is that is a crazy haunted doll story. There's I mean, there's I should say to anybody listening and wondering, are we going to cover X haunted doll or Y haunted doll? Probably not, because there's there's hours and hours of haunted doll stories out there.

I saw some creepy shit in Scotland that I sent you a link to and that's not coming up. So I guess if somebody sees me online, ask me about it.

There's those Mary, what were they, Mary Cross dolls or something?

Yeah, Mary Cross is fucking weird. Yeah, I honestly didn't remember a lot from the tour and I was hoping you would read the rest and fill me in. But I did see some creepy dolls on a tour in Scotland.

Correction, Mary Cross isn't anything. He was actually on a tour of something called Mary King's Close in the Hidden Network of Streets Beneath Edinburgh's Royal Mile.

Yeah, I thought that most of those stories you would save for another episode. Oikiku was an interesting addition because one of the other real life doll legends that I wanted to cover was also another Japanese one, but it doesn't really cross over with or have much in common with Oikiku.

Well, so few Venn diagrams include teeth.

True. But so I never heard of this kind of creepy doll. It's called the Hinnagami doll. And I'm not entirely sure. This is one of those things where there's lots of writing about it on the Internet, but most of the writing seems to be sourced from one page. So I don't know. The page is an online guide to Japanese folklore, yokai.com. And they have this story about Hinnagami dolls that I found super interesting. But again, I couldn't really find much else about them on the Internet. So maybe someone just made this up and posted it. But if they made it up, it's a great doll myth. So Hinnagami are powerful spirits from Toyama Prefecture. So they're spirits that reside in dolls and they grant their owners wishes. So families who own Hinnagami quickly become rich and powerful. And people who become rich and famous very quickly are sometimes suspected of owning Hinnagami. But the dolls come with a catch. If a new request is not made as soon as a wish is granted, the Hinnagami will demand, what is next? As soon as that request is fulfilled, the Hinnagami demands another and another and another and this pattern never ends. So they're a creepy doll that kind of speaks to human greed. And the article about them on the on yokai.com says that because their creation comes from human greed and desire, Hinnagami cling to their creators obsessively and never leave their side. Their attachment is so powerful that even death cannot separate it from its master. When a Hinnagami's creator dies, the Hinnagami will follow them to hell and haunt them for all of eternity.

Oh, wow.

So, yeah, brutal cursed doll, but operates in a very unique way for a cursed doll. Like the idea that it's essentially like a genie that makes you keep wishing until I guess you probably wish yourself into a corner basically.

It's funny. I don't know when the Hinnagami doll was invented, but I do find very similar to Godzilla being a direct response to nuclear war. It does seem like America and Japan, Japan even more so do have this like work, work, work, work, work culture. That I do wonder of the like, we got email, we thought we'd have all this extra time because now it takes one minute to send something versus it used to take 20 minutes. I'm having this extra time now. But reality was well now you got to send shit every fucking minute. They burned the midnight oil over there. And so I do wonder if it's there is like a potential direct thematic like we're working ourselves a fucking dex. What's next? What's next? The boss wants more. The boss wants more.

Yeah.

I don't know. I never get to go home. I got a fucking cram for these exams to get into university. So I don't know. Could be talking on my ass.

Yeah. I don't there wasn't a date. The reason the dolls caught my eye actually is because their creation ritual reminds me a little bit of homunculi.

Homunculi. I knew that was coming.

Yeah. So get this. In the most common ritual, the person who wishes to create a hinnagami must begin collecting grave earth that has been trampled on by people during the day.

This sounds old. This sounds older than 1980s maybe.

Grave earth must be collected in this way every night for three years. For an even stronger hinnagami, they should take earth from seven different graveyards in seven different villages.

That's upping the risk, man. You can't be stealing from so many places.

And I don't know. It's unclear if you then have to also do that. If it has to be grave earth that's been trampled on by people during the day and you have to collect it every night for three years from seven different graveyards in seven different villages, it sounds like your whole life would just be collecting dirt to make your hinnagami doll. It would take a very long time.

You got to do at least three years. You got to let everyone in your Rolodex know like I'm busy for three years.

Yeah, I can't come out tonight.

I got to go get dirt. And I got to get trampled on dirt and if this is the States, like not even Arlington Cemetery has people who give that much of fuck to show up every day.

Yeah. Maybe if this is an older ritual, maybe people spent more time in graveyards in the past than they do now. But once collected, however you collect it and wherever you store it, because if you're storing seven different graveyards worth of dirt for three years, you're going to have to explain to your significant other why your garage is filled with dirt. But once you have all this, the grave earth is mixed with human blood until it becomes clay like. Then it is molded into a doll shape representing a god or a spirit that its creator worships. This doll is placed and left in a busy road until it has been trampled upon by 1,000 people.

Oh my god.

Who's getting that count?

Oh, you got to take it to Times Square.

Yeah, you can get it done in one afternoon in Times Square. But if you're in a little Japanese village, that could also take years. How busy is the road? But then you retrieve the doll, and at that point, it is a hinnagami. There is an alternative method, which is to collect graveyard stones and carve them into 1,000 small dolls each about 9 centimeters long. These dolls are boiled in a large pot until only one of them rises to the surface.

9,000 in one fucking pot?

One thousand each 9 centimeters long.

Oh, okay. So that still seems, that's, I don't know, that's a lot of caterpillars in one pot.

It is a lot. I mean, I feel like this probably would take as long as collecting dirt to carve 1,009 centimeter long dolls.

That's probably what you tell your certificate other. Listen, like, I got two roads here and they're both around the same length.

Yeah.

So I'm going to need space.

Yeah. The doll that rises to the top of the pot is said to contain the combined souls of all 1,000 dolls. And this is a special type of Hinnagami called a Kochabo. It didn't say anything about how powerful that would be or how quickly it would ruin your life or really, really what's different about it. But it says it's special. So if any of our listeners create Hinnagami, let us know how it goes for you.

It seems like you got to make a lot of wishes. Maybe wish us some good fortune.

Yeah.

You got to do a wish every fucking day, dude. So just throw us a couple of bones. That'd be great.

Yeah.

Throw Ally a couple of wishes at Ally's books of massive success.

Yeah, there we go. Actually, that's a great use of Hinnagami wishes, everybody. If you're trapped in an evil spirit that is going to make your life a living hell by making you continually wish for things, wish for stuff for your buds at Scared All The Time and Ally. I had some research on Annabelle prepared, but we're cruising up on two hours here. So I think this is a good place to wrap things up. So we'd like to thank Ally very much for coming on and being our special guests. Ally, is there anything else, I know Broken Dolls, is there anything else that you'd like to plug at the end of the show here?

Sure. So Broken Dolls is coming out next year and I also have my first adult book, which is not a horror, it's historical, and it's called The Other March Sisters, which is based on little women. And then my two books that are out now in the world, if you want to read my stuff, is Ghost Girl and This Appearing House, which are both middle grade.

Fantastic.

So yeah, that's what I'm doing.

Were those the covers of the same artists are both those, the cover?

It is the same artist and she's also doing the Broken Dolls one.

Oh my God.

And the preliminary art that I've seen is amazing.

I really like the covers of both your books. They remind me of an artist I like named Nicole Goo a lot.

Yeah, she's, Maki's phenomenal. She did such a great job.

That's awesome.

I feel very, very lucky.

Very cool.

Well, yeah, we'll put links to all your stuff in the show notes and your socials and everything.

And don't just be like me. Like, don't just judge it by its cover. Go buy it and read it and enjoy it. Scare yourself or give it to your kids to be probably more scared or empowered. I don't know the content of each book, but one of the two things might happen.

And last but not least, let's place dolls on the fear tier real quick, Ed.

Sure.

Where we put in dolls?

Oh, honestly, I was going to put them pretty low. And then I learned about the fucking teeth. And I learned about the ones that make you too much of a good thing, like the wishing stuff. So if I just walk into a room and there's a creepy doll, I could probably spend the night there. It's not that big a deal. But once they start talking, once they start growing teeth and hair, once they start drawing me in with the promise of wishes, jokes on me, Oh, Henry's story, Monkey's paw. I'm going to put them as like a six, six out of ten.

OK, OK. I was I was going to go like four or five because I think I think you're right. I could spend a night in a room with a creepy doll.

because you spend the night in a room with a fucking reborn.

No, no, no, so that's the exception.

Mine's going up to seven with a reborn.

I'll I'll I'll put dolls at a five. And Ally, how about you? Where are you going to put dolls?

One being least scary, 10 being most scary.

Right.

because of the reborn that I now know exist, I'm going to go with a six.

All right. OK.

All right. They're five, six, seven.

It would have been like a four otherwise.

Yeah. Yeah. Reborn adds a level of intensity.

It really changed things.

because here's the thing is there's also somewhere right now there is a man, woman, hopefully not child, but there's a person who's at a party being asked, what do you do? And they are saying, well, I work at this place called Reborn. And then they have to explain. And then people aren't going to get it and they're going to have to pull up on their phone. Well, here's our website.

Yeah.

And then they're never going to be invited anywhere again.

Party time is over. Yeah.

Party time is over.

Party time is over. Dude, shut it down. That sucks that you invited that Reborn employee. Yeah. So yeah, so pretty scary. At least middle of the road for all of us, middle of the fear tier.

Yeah. Well, this has been a great episode to kick off our Halloween season. This is going to be our first episode that airs in October. And yeah, thank you very much, Ally. Until next time, I'm Chris Cullari.

I'm Ed Voccola. That was Ally.

That was Ally. This was Scared All The Time. And we will see you next time. Bye.

Scared All The Time is co-produced by Chris Cullari and Ed Voccola.

Written by Chris Cullari.

Edited by Ed Voccola.

Additional support and keeper of sanity is Tess Fifle.

Our theme song is the track Scared by Perpetual Stew.

And Mr. Disclaimer is ****.

And just a reminder, you can now support the podcast with SAP Premium and get all kinds of cool shit in return. Depending on the tier you choose, we'll be offering everything from ad-free episodes, producer credits, exclusive access, and exclusive merch.

So go and sign up at scaredallthetimepodcast.com.

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Tonight, we are in this together. Together. Together.

===TRANSCRIPT END===