On eBay, a Fantastical, Earnest World of Haunted Dolls

Though eBay prohibits the sale of “intangible items,” hundreds of allegedly haunted dolls
(not including the above) are listed for sale on the site.

Photograph by Martin Parr / Magnum

Via newyorker.com by Katherine Carlson

The doll’s hooded blue eyes and pursed lips are framed by the jagged bangs of a white-blond pageboy haircut. The eBay listing warns, “Haunted Doll Dakota Spirit Child *Very Active* *Experienced Only*.” In the description below, the seller, ackiej25, explains that the doll is embodied by the spirit of a child named Dakota, who was murdered by his mother. Belying the doll’s placid features, Dakota “can be quite angry at times,” ackiej25 warns, and should not be treated like any other toy: “He cannot be positioned near any mirrors, or he will break them.” The listing concludes with a breezy note that “all paranormal and metaphysical items sold in my store are for entertainment purposes only.”

I first started cruising haunted-doll listings after hearing a “Haunted Doll Watch” segment on the comedy-advice podcast “My Brother, My Brother, and Me.” The show’s McElroy brothers alternately chuckle and gasp over the toys as a kooky time-waster, and at first that was the reason that I browsed them, too. I was surprised at the volume: eBay has long been a destination for serious doll collectors hunting for antiques, but searching “haunted doll” yields hundreds of results (six hundred and sixty the last time I checked). The results range in price from around five dollars to the high hundreds. Initially, I would click on the dirty, slumped-over grotesqueries right away—but I discovered that once you’ve seen one cracked porcelain face with a dead-eyed pout, you’ve seen ’em all. Instead, it’s the sellers’ storytelling that provides the charge.


A doll is just a doll, but a haunted doll requires proof—or at least enough of a backstory that a prospective buyer can embrace the possibility of the supernatural. And so, in their item descriptions, the sellers are sincere, enthusiastic, authoritative; the text is peppered with scientific-sounding acronyms such as E.M.F. (electromagnetic field) and E.V.P. (electronic voice phenomenon). As if by common decree, most of the haunted dolls fall into one of three categories: baby, Victorian lady, and clown. The babyish dolls, like Dakota, are often advertised as containing the spirits of murdered children, while Victorian dolls tend to be sexual succubae, an improbable number of whom have been cursed by the Chilean sex demons Fiura and Trauco. The creepiness of the clown dolls is self-explanatory. In prose that varies wildly in grammatical correctness and punctuation (and is often formatted in bold Comic Sans, that typographic punch line), sellers report phenomena and knit together origin stories: “We have even heard laughs in the middle of the night I thought I could Handle it but this is a next level of haunted I need it gone,” posts a seller who goes by punkinleah. Another seller, dark_horse200, writes, “a client came to me, asking for me to research his doll and let him know whether or not the spirit that was within the doll was evil.” The results, as you might imagine, were not good: “When I went to contact him about what I found, the client had completely disappeared on me.” Just our luck: “Haunted Ouija doll - Blinks, Noisy, demonic spirit portal” ships for free anywhere in the United States. The shivery sincerity of the listings, and the lack of narrative polish, make the browsing experience feel like the online equivalent of wandering into a cluttered booth in a run-down antique mall off a country highway.

When dealing with a corporate behemoth like eBay, though, complications arise. The site prohibits the sale of “intangible items, or things that buyers can’t confirm that they’ve received.” Even more explicit: “Listings that offer someone’s ‘soul’ or a container that claims to have someone’s ‘soul’ aren’t allowed.” To comply, most sellers, like ackiej25, include a disclaimer that metaphysical activity is not guaranteed. The grudging legalistic language, when accompanied by a lengthy story recounting ghostly activity, only seems to reinforce the sellers’ veracity. Many of them put “for entertainment purposes only” in scare quotes, suggesting friendly collusion with the buyer. “Look, I have to say this doll’s not haunted,” the seller seems to wink. “But, between you and me, it’s totally haunted.”

And though I may declare that I don’t believe in ghosts, if the push-pull of my doll browsing is any indication, well, I very obviously believe in ghosts. The haunted dolls appeal to the same part of me that is too afraid to watch “The Babadook” but reads the Wikipedia summary right before bed. At the heart of my affinity might be what the critic Julia Kristeva calls “abjection,” in which desire and repulsion form “an inescapable boomerang.” I almost envy those who go through with a purchase, whether out of curiosity or true belief. Some first-person accounts make owning a haunted doll sound like having a fun roommate, but I’m far too suggestible to take the big leap from lurker to owner. The last thing I need is to be disfigured in my sleep by a jilted bride. I, too, might end up pleading, “I thought I could Handle it but this is a next level of haunted.”

But whether any of these dolls are truly haunted seems beside the point. As I scroll through pages of smudged cheeks and wonky eyes, pausing on “ ‘Gracelyn’ (not vampire)” and “Bethany, Sad, Lonely Spirit” and “MECA VERY OLD POWERFUL SOUL,” I feel smug that even a sprawling corporation like eBay, with all its accompanying blandness-inducing powers, can’t suppress the batty and outright bizarre. In their unapologetic weirdness and scrappy prose, haunted-doll listings offer a reprieve from the Internet age’s slick, ironic posturing and its distancing effects.

Are the sellers, too, sincere? I hope at least some of them are. Checking the user profiles reveals that some abruptly switched to the haunted-doll biz from different mercantile areas—but who’s to say they weren’t believers all along, even when they were only using eBay to unload Nokia accessories and secondhand clothes? Of the many profiles I’ve clicked through, nearly all have overwhelmingly positive rankings, and some have hundreds of satisfied customers. As for the buyers, their appreciation seems equally sincere. Their reviews convey confidence in the legitimacy of the sellers’ claims, corporate policies and skeptics be damned. As one satisfied buyer of a “Beautiful Antique Nun Doll” raves, “Thank You! Can’t wait to start experiencing things!!”

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