Ms. Creepy

Ms. Creepy

My mom was a huge garage sale fanatic. She’d rather spend her money on the objects she’d find at them than pay her bills. She never went out to them that she didn’t bring something home. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes it was really good finds but at other times it was just weird. My mom was also into dolls so they were always around the house somewhere. None of them ever bothered anyone until she brought home Ms. Creepy.

This was an antique doll, one of those kinds that don’t have legs but have the quilted pouch under it’s skirt to put your jammies or treasures into. I think they may have once been called pillow dolls because they sat on the pillows when the bed was made. My sister and I had had something similar to her when we’d been younger but the more modern version. This one was made of cloth. Her arms had been stuffed with soft material but her head felt solid. As we would find out later, it was composed of hard compressed sawdust. She wore a bonnet over long curled dark hair, which mom had been told was actual human hair, and her dress was not overly embellished, just a simple pale green cotton dress. Nothing striking you might say. No, not really. That is until you looked at her face. It had been painted on the cloth so no molding of plastic, no eyes that opened or closed if she sat up or laid down. Just paint. I don’t know how they achieved the effect but that dolls eyes watched you where ever you went while you were in the room with it. Everyone noticed this aspect of her and were just unnerved by it. Of course my mom had to give her a prime spot on the back of the couch to see all the home’s comings and goings. There was also something about her mouth. She was neither painted with a smile or a frown but somehow she looked malevolent. Ok, just downright evil. Everyone who walked into our house had their attention caught immediately by that doll and all of them got creeped out and hated it instantly. It was a visceral reaction. It was almost fascinating to watch people come into the room and nervously look at that doll as if to make sure she was still sitting where they had last seen her or affirming their feeling of her eyes following them. .

I can’t say that she necessarily caused any negative things to happen in our home. We perhaps had a bit more to struggle with than some but not so much that it couldn’t be explained by other more natural cause and effect factors. I think most of her power was in how her mere existence seemed to almost shock and intimidate people who saw her.

My mom also had a small dog at that time. Not tiny purse size but not quite big enough to be considered a medium size dog either. His name was Sammy. Sammy spent his time either outside or in a specific area of the house. He was not allowed into the main portions of the house because he was frankly, incredibly hyper and destructive. I’d seen this dog clear a 4 foot fence at a dead run just to try to chase down another dog someone was walking on the sidewalk in front of the house. Everything was at risk of being chewed or broken if Sammy got to it and with four people living in the house there was a lot of things he’d have a field day shredding if he got out. We’d all gone out one day and when we’d gotten home we’d found Sammy had gotten out of his area. We immediately went in search of what he may have torn up in his time of having full run of the house. We’d been gone long enough that we expected to find all sorts of damage but of all that he could have gotten hold of for all the time we’d been gone the only thing touched was that doll and the only thing he’d done was chew her face off.

Years later when I had my own home my mom brought me that doll in a trash bag and suggested that maybe I might be able to find someone who could restore her. I never confirmed or denied which I might do while she was there but as soon as she left I took that bag straight outside and dropped it in the trash can. Let her do her haunting in the land fill. If even Sammy saw her scowl as evil and instinctually ate her face then I was certainly going to follow my own instinct and rid the world of her continued existence. RIP Ms. Creepy!