From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of I Heart Radio. Hello, Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is known. They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our superproducer, all mission controlled decade. Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Longtime listeners, you'll recall that we have often we've often touched on the subject of curses. Were often touched on the subject of people who have interacted with things in extraordinary ways they cannot explain. In fact, in an earlier listener Males segment, we explored the bizarre story of an anonymous tourists who stole an artifact from the ancient disaster side of Pompeii. This tourist came back fifteen years later and returned the object. It's not that she had some sort of sudden pang of conscience. Instead, she believed hardcore believed this object was cursed, that it was plaguing her with all sorts of terrible luck that simply could not be explained by mundane means. And I'm wondering a good way for maybe a good way for us to set off on our exploration of today's topic is to talk about these objects that surround us in our lives. Matt Nold, did you all ever have an object in your in your family, or in your childhood or even the current day that you felt was on some may be hard to explain, level unlucky, and there was something weird about it, some vibe that gave off as though you had psychometry, never been a big fan of like ceramic clowns for example. Uh, nothing specific, but uh you a mutual friend of all three of our Sarah cotton Off, um, who does like podcast ad sales stuff and we used to work with years ago. Uh, she is obsessed with haunted objects, so we should ask her. But um, we went to that store in New York once I believe it's called gosh came what it's called it. There was a show called Auditorium or Oddities on Science Channel that was like about these you know, quirky, this quirky couple that runs this oddity shop. And we went in there with Sarah and she immediately asked them or any of these objects haunted or cursed, and they're like, no, we we don't. We don't do that. M it's not haunted in the same way that we're gonna be talking about today. But this is my grandfather's wedding ring, and I've been wearing it for quite a while, and I have to say, I believe that it's just my knowledge that I'm wearing his ring and makes me think about him a lot. But I swear to you he just a his His voice appears to not in an actual manifestation, but like I can, I can hear myself thinking his thoughts way way more now that I've been wearing this ring. Um, this is also his stamp. I don't know if you probably can't read that this stamp. Okay, it's nice to stamp things with it, but yeah, I don't. I don't have anything that is unlucky necessarily. I've got a story I can tell you about this house in general and the luck or the unluck that it has brought. But that's for another day. Al Right, Okay, I'm writing it down. You guys know, I keep a little had here where I write things, and they my language, so we're going to follow up on that I've got. I've got a couple of slides. I've got a couple of I guess you would call them unusual possessions. Uh. And it's funny too that we call objects possessions. Don't wait. One that I can see off hour now is one that I personally hesitate to touch. It's a carving of mandrill from I believe West Africa. It's West West African in origin. And that is also how it came to me and why it stays in my house, even though I don't particularly like messing with it. I would say I respect it. But that story is a story for a another day as well. The point is that we all have things like this, things that we imbue with some sort of meaning, that we anthropomorphize in a degree. You know, like you might have something that you believe or you like to think it has a personality, even if you consider yourself a really skeptical person. Human beings will like name their cars, their ships and other vessels. There's even an old cultural belief I believe in Japan that once an object reaches a hundred years old, it acquires a kind of spirit of its own and these stories of objects inhabited by something good or bad. Uh, they occur throughout human history, they continue in the modern day ways that may surprise some of us. And not all of these objects have the same type of allegedly supernatural aspects. In fact, some people like the infamous Ed and Loraine Warren, will tell you that certain objects are not just bringers of misfortune, but their whole to something somehow sentient. So can an object be haunted? By the way the weather here in Atlanta today is perfect for this, This is stormy night weather. Tiny cathul who says an object can definitely be haunted, well, well, no, no matter what Fulu or any other ancient one says, there is no scientific proof at this moment that any object has ever been han did here are the facts? Yeah? First things first, at least at the time of this recording, there's no proof that's universally accepted that anything in history, including objects, has been haunted. And and by proof we mean there's no there's nothing in the world that we know of now that everyone can point to and agree. Yes, you know, there is a ghost in this toaster, and it speaks to us through messages burned into the bread that just hasn't happened yet, or something like that. And that's because for something to be haunted, there would have to be some kind of consciousness attached, right, some sort of sentience, And we don't know very much about our own conscious states. We don't even know what happens to the thing we call consciousness when our physical hardware breaks down, that's right, I mean, and you know it's obviously it's research is ongoing, and it's the kind of thing that can go deep in many directions, whether it's science or the study of the actual hardware you speak of ben the brain itself, or more into metaphysical or even spiritual realms as to you know, is the brain just a brain? Is is it imbued with something more like that's that's part of some greater divine connectivity with the universe, or some sort of spiritual deity like a soul um. So there are billions of people across the world who might believe that they in particular or a group so that they're associated with no exactly what happens when you die, when the brain dies, whether it's instant nothingness, you know, that's that's what my that's what I typically picture and it's kind of scary. UM or reincarnation seems a lot more fun. Or a particular type of eternity or afterlife that might look a certain way, or feel a certain way, or be based around a certain set of rules. Are speaking of rules. If you don't follow them, you might go to the bad place, very bad place, depending on you know, what you've done in your life on this earth in the way you've chosen to use that equipment that Ben was talking about. Um. The problem is that among all of these folks, the scientists, the philosophers, the spiritual leaders, you know, they all might have a strong case, or at least they might think they do, as to what the real truth is behind sentience and and understanding and being. But as we all know, uh, no one really knows. No one really has that definitive proof that will shut all of those other perspectives down. There is no right or true answer that we know of. Therefore, a lot of this exists in the realm of belief, as does the idea of haunting. That is correct, and one of the primary reasons here is something that we covered a little while back. I can't remember the exact episode, but we discussed the current impossibility of measuring whatever the actual thing is, the energy that would transfer between a consciousness, a human or any animal or whatever into an object. Whatever that stuff is, whether it's physical, metaphysical, or whatever, we have no way of measuring that thing that's stuff yet, if there is any stuff at all. Right, right, we don't know what we're searching for. Necessarily, we don't know how to define it. And and to be absolutely fair, you know, when we're saying that no one has a right or true answer, what we what one way to look at it is the problem is that absolutely no one has ever been able to convince everyone else that their answer is correct. So there may be there may well be an answer about the afterlife. Uh, and it may be very specific and one of those many religions or many theories that arose since the dawn of a corded history, maybe in fact correct. It's just like, you know, it's almost eight billion people trying to order a pizza, and then you know, we can't even agree whether it should be a pizza. There's somebody, there's like a whole you know, group of a billion other people who say, guys, we should we should have salad. This is not a cheap day. That's that's kind of where we're at, and that's where we have been at for a long time. But we can't we don't know what to measure. Like if you lose your car keys, great because that means you know what you're looking for. We've lost we have. We are looking for something that we cannot really define. And yes, I think there is I think that story about the twenty one Grahams as the weight of the soul is amazing. But there are a lot of problems if you look into it anyway. So that's one side of it. There's another side here. There's a conflicting fact. It is a fact, in arguably that for thousands and thousands of years, people around the world, independent of one another, have decided to revere, to fear, to avoid, or in some cases, gather toward objects and places they believe hold extraordinary power. A god under a mountain, a ghost haunting the site of an ancient grave, an entity you know, maybe anchored to a sword or a staff or a spear, or a demon inhabiting a doll. So we're all of these people, these literally millions of millions of people across the span of human history, just collectively making it up. That seems really unlikely. That seems incredibly unlikely. And so because of that, it seems like we have two inarguable facts that appear to be in opposition, no scientifically accepted proof that ghosts exist, and countless examples again of millions and millions of people believing wholehearted that they do. So in today's episode, we're diving into the space between these two conflicting facts. And that's what I was gonna skip it, but you got me, You got me. It's just such a convenient phrase. We're diving into this space between these two conflicting facts, and let's see how we can respond to this question, can an object be haunted? We'll get into it after a word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. Oddly enough, the best place to begin here is with dolls. Did you guys like knowl you said you've got to You've got a particular weakness for creepy ceramic clown figurines. Those are kind of doll like. I was more, you know, dolls for for young boys, which we call action figures. I was very into human and ninja turtles, and you know, g I Joe and stuff like that. Um. I even had a weird like crossover interest in my little pony growing up. I remember that very distinctly. Uh dolls, Yeah, I mean they're really just dolls, are just posable figurines of some sort. I guess the idea of dolls tends to be associated with uh, young girls, but that also feels a little you know, in this day and age overly gender. I mean, dolls are obviously for anyone, but um, they certainly can be creepy, those porcelain ones with the very very white uh and and expressionless faces, um, and seemingly real hair. You know, gender is a construct. Dolls are for any kind of creep who wants one. Good good point people you think, I'm sorry, we think of people's grandmothers, though, having rooms just overflowing with these things and just looking down upon you from high shelves. Thankfully, my grandmother was not one of those people. But but bless you to anyone who has one of those and had to grow up around that kind of horror. I'm just gonna posit something here. My son is five. We've talked about him a couple of times. He loves stuffed animals, So not quite dolls, but similar because a lot of dollmakers, you know, especially when we're gonna talk about in a little bit, we're originally making a stuffed animal or stuffed animals as a product, and then dolls came later. Generally not always that, that's not always the case, but stuffed animals. You guys, I think you've seen it before, maybe just the everybody on this call, But my son was gifted a Mickey Mouse doll that is like human sized. It's bigger than my son. Yeah. Yeah, is that one of those gifts as a parent you're kind of like, thanks. Well, I mean, he loved it at the time when he first got it. He still loves it now, calls him Big Mickey. At night when I'm putting my son to sleep and that thing is in the room, I am telling you, no matter what my personal beliefs, just sitting in the corner in the shadows and seeing its dimensions there, there is something utterly creepy about it, and I don't know how it It doesn't give my son nightmares, he says. He feels safer knowing that it's there, you know, like I've got um I probably had a different background from you guys, because in my earlier years, my very early years, I did have some sketchy family characters with my loved dearly. One of them, I may have mentioned to you guys off air before, was my great aunt nine spelled like the spelled like the number. And she was regarded as a practitioner of things that might be considered you know, hedge magic or folk magic. And she had quite a collection of all sorts of interesting things and artifacts. And this was the first person I met who had dolls that she considered dangerous dolls that were made for a purpose of specific types. And this is something that is going to be familiar with a lot of the folklorist in the crowd today. It's also an ancient practice, and it's practice I was not aware of at the time. But we'll we'll get to it. So I guess in a way, I had early experiences with dangerous dolls, and my Aunt nine has passed on to whatever is on the other side of this crazy improv exercise we call life. But I also I think that colored my perception of dolls in general, you know, And I would see other people with these things. I would inevitably think like, oh, what are they what are they doing with this one? Is this like a is this like a barbie? Or is this like a don't touch it, someone will get sick kind of thing. Uh, we all have this place. And I love the point about dolls versus action figures. They're really the same thing. They're figurines, right, of different genres or types. But yeah, we're talking about the things that are commonly regarded as toys or collectors items here in the modern age. For some of us, those are very nostalgic relics of childhood. For others, they're irredeemably creepy. It's no surprise that when people talk about haunted objects nowadays, they tend to talk most often about dolls and and there are a couple of pop culture reasons that are very obvious that will get to. But one of the most infamous haunted objects is a doll called an About. And this comes to us from the warrants that we mentioned at the top that we also did an episode on I Forgot about that. Is it a two part No, it's just a one partner. It's great, really great info in the Warrens. So let's talk about him. Um, they are paranormal investigators. They are I believe they style themselves as demonologists. Is that true, Ben, I think demonologists Ed Warren the or Ed Warren passed away, I believe. But um, he was a demonologist and Annabelle uh first, like was made known to them way back in nineteen seventy and you probably know it because of the film series. But this was a real doll that these paranoral investigators and demonologists like encountered. There was a student nurse who contacted them because they were already kind of known for what they did. Um. She claimed that the doll was just being weird, like, hey, I got this doll in. It's weird. It's not just weird looking, it's being weird, it's doing stuff. She said that, uh, a psychic told her it was inhabited by the spirit of a dead person, a girl named Annabelle, And immediately the Warrens are like, Okay, yeah, we need to see this doll. Let's check it out. And the legend was born, right Yeah. According to the accounts from the Warrens, this nursing student had a roommate and she and her roommate when they had learned from a psychic that this doll was inhabited by a spirit of a of a dead human girl. They tried to make peace of sorts to arrive at an armistice, you know, and respected space pebesiance to it, etcetera. But they had no luck. The events continued, and they accelerated, and they became worrisome and frightening and potentially to pay on how you hear it described dangerous, So in desperation, the student reaches out to the Warren's. Just like you said, Matt, Long story short. You can hear more about it in our previous episode. The doll Annabelle is currently contained in a glass display box at the Warren's Occult Museum there in Monroe, Connecticut. You can go look at it. It doesn't look like the Annabelle of the movies. I would argue it looks a little more creepy. But as you can imagine, skeptics have some issues with the story here. Uh, they're not They're not quite accusing. Not everybody is saying, you know, these folks are con artists or anything like that. There's a guy named Joseph Laycock wrote a fantastic article about this at the time, it was a Texas State University assistant professor of religious studies. He thinks the story may have been influenced by the cultural ecology of the time, by the zeitgeist, because you said, right, that's when when the story of Annabelle again begins. According to the Warren's something else happened a few years prior. There were other scary doll tropes, like a great Twilight Zone episode called Living Doll, which came out just about five years before that Warren story. And this doesn't prove anything, but the character of the mother in that episode is also named Annabelle. So if you're really skeptical or you're kind of cynical, do you think ed Warren found this doll and kind of thought about the Twilight Zone and then said we'll call it Anabelle. You know, maybe or even the if it's true that this nursing student really was experiencing something weird, maybe it was because of that Twilight Zone, the episode that she caught. I mean, you know, who knows there it's all in a conjecture, right, Hey, can we just take a moment and really appreciate Nohl's hat right now, just before we do anything else. Well, can we appreciate the fact that this hat was gifted to me by the magnanimous Ben Bolan. Uh. It says Illuminati on the bottom, and what is this on the top. Don't trust anyone? Yes, not haunted by the way, definitely not haunted. I do trust some people. Definitely trust you too, mostly, But but I I do like the hat and I wanted to rocket today. So thank you Ben. Sorry for Well, we're talking. We're talking about objects, right, That's that's another object. There's the there's the nihilistic argument that we're all just objects, you know, floating in space. And and really, if you think about it, I was going to save this for later, but if you think about it, you are listening from a haunted object right now. You are as a consciousness, as a mind, You are inhabiting a body. You are haunting it, you are possessing it. Your body is a haunted house just happens to be growing all the time. So so so I love that John Mayer song Your body is a haunted house. Yeah, I have to go and go. It's better than the temple one. Uh. This this brings us to the idea of haunted dolls in the modern day, so excellent horror franchise, The Conjuring. They get ahold of this story. It's been in, it's been around before you know. They're like the spooky docuseries unsolved mysteries type investigations, but the Conjuring takes it to the world of fiction, or people might argue even further into the world of fiction. And Annabel goes from being an oddity and a small Connecticut museum to a global phenomenon, the subject of three different films, and it cements its status as the world's most famous haunted doll, if not most famous haunted object. But it's not alone. There is another ext There actually multiple examples of allegedly haunted dolls. Specifically, and uh, we found one that you might not have heard of unless this was already very much your bag of of badgers, your bag of stuffed badgers, your stuffed bag of stuffed badgers, anyway you would. You might be surprised to hear of another doll that came to prominence around the same time, whose name is simply Robert full name, Robert the Doll. You just want to go ahead and apologize to Robert before we even start talking about him. Um, just Robert, We're sorry. We were just talking about you for the purposes of this show. Yeah, you've done a lot for the podcast, Robert. We just feel like this is a story we need to tell. In full disclosure, Robert may or may not be on the board of Illumination Global Unlimited, so we want you to know that we're doing our best to be fully transparent and did not exhibit a conflict of interest. Um, Robert's a real physical doll. And you guys know how I hate uh all right, I just I don't respect clowning people for physical features or anything like that. I guess we can get away with it, maybe with Robert. Can we see can we say it? Can we just say the quiet part out loud? He is creepy looking? Yeah, he really is creepy looking. Um. You can go online to a lot of places and see actual images of Robert first and foremost, Robert the doll dot Org. Just have to throw that out there. I love love that you are l exists. That is what he looks. He's like a creepy sailor. He looks like kind of like a doll. Where it's like, show me where the bad man touched you kind of doll. Um also like like like maybe like a dummy he would use to do like CPR practice or something like that. But very uncanny, these weird segments of fabric that are joined together to make the different sections of his face. That seems very Hannibal lecter e. That's see, it's I don't know, that's I mean, obviously no offense. Robert h no offense. So let's talk about Robert. Robert was let's say, the possession of it's a doll, it's a thing. So it was owned by Robert Eugene Auto as a person. I propose we call Robert Eugene Auto Gene for the purpose of this story, just to keep it, keep it clear fully, Gene was Roberts caretaker. Let's say. Um, and you can read a lot of different stories, origin stories, some that claim to be original, some that seem to be sort of fan fiction. Um, you can read it just a ton of different versions of Robert's story. But let's let's just talk about the official one that you can find there on that website you just mentioned. Nor. Yes, it was created as a one of a kind creepy doll by the Steve Company. I'm thinking, as Steve might be stife, I'm gonna go Steve Company of Germany near the turn of the century. Um it, I don't want to hear ta rary. He is forty inches tall and stuffed with wood wool, which is known as excelsior, which I am tickled by because excelsior is also a term that journalists would maybe used to define something of excellent quality, maximum luxury, and it was a Marvel Comics legend, stan Lee's personal life motto excelsior with the exclamation market them. But it's also wood wool shavings. It's basically it's like wood sawdusty type shavings that you can use to stuff something with. So probably already has a bit of a you know, shed like smell to it. And yes, he is in fact dressed like a sailor in a little stay other suit. And at one point he was painted kind of like a court jester. Um. But but all that stuff is worn off over the years. Um. And he is quite large, right, Yes, yeah he's Ah, he's a big mickey all his own. So the the official story is that, uh, the Auto family was a pretty prominent family in Key West Florida, and Otto's grandfather was on a trip to Germany in nineteen o four. This is where he is believed to have picked up Robert as a gift for his grandson. The story is as as Matt said, a little murky at this point, because the legends get a little bit juicier. You'll see one that claims a young woman of quote Bahamian descent gave Otto this doll, either as a gift or as a curse, kind of a poison apple for some unspecified slight. And whatever the case, and whether the legend or the official story, the truth of the matter is that Auto becomes incredibly enamored of and attached to this doll. He names it after himself, Robert the Doll. Something interesting happens psychologically. He builds, or he gets his folks to build a boy's home, a boy's room in the attic and the family attic just for Robert, you know, complete with toys, chairs, a bed, the whole nine. And then he started blaming anything wrong that he did on this doll. So someone would say, hey, did you track in mud on the floor or sand or something like that, and he would say that wasn't me. That was Robert, and they would say, oh, okay, Jean, but this is starting to get a little weird, you know, as this your imaginary friend, et cetera. They probably didn't think about it at the time, but I know a lot of our fellow conspiracy realist in the audience are wondering, was this boy making a tulpa a thought form interesting yeah, or what was he dealing with something, you know, mental health like in his life that some kind of disassociation or some kind of you know, application of his own actions onto this thing as a Anyway, I'm not a psychologist who knows what was going on inside Jean and or Robert, but it's a it's definitely strange because it wasn't just a childhood thing, right, This relationship between Robert the Man and Robert the Doll continued. Yes, Jean became a pretty well known regional artist who is widely considered an eccentric. The partnership between Robert the Guy and Robert the Doll continued well into adulthood. Um, that's an interesting point about disassociation too. We would have to ask where it came from. Could there have been some sort of traumatic situation occurring if so, that's lost to history. Eventually, Robert the Man, Robert Eginato, passes away. His wife, who survives him, has always hated this thing, you know what I mean. She's she's of the mind that you know, call her conservative, but she's thinking a marriage is between two people, not two people in a doll. Anyhow, as soon as he passes away, she orders that this doll be locked up in a cedar chest and hidden in the attic, never touched again. She passes away, and years and years after her death, this doll Robert is rediscovered. And now if you wish, you can visit Robert at the East Martello Museum. Oh, we should mention it wasn't just a situation of Gene. Robert the Man be weird it around the doll. Other people said the doll would do weird stuff, like it would move, it would exhibit facial expressions. Maybe it would change. It would change, Uh, it would People would hear voices around it, things like that. And now if you wish you can visit Robert. He still has his stuffed teddy bear too, because he had his own toys. Remember, Oh, dude, I forgot about that. That was that was the whole thing. If you if you check out Robert at the museum right now, he's holding a doll himself, So it is uh, I don't know, man, I wonder if that Teddy Bear then becomes the next thing somehow infected or it's a host. But this it's strange because if you look at the history of this of this guy, it came into the public eye kind of around the same time as Annabelle or its discovery, which means it was also a few years after that's Twilight Zone episode. Just Teddy Rucks been figure into all this, that's my big question. My Teddy Rucks been asked me not to include them in this episode. Fair enough, my Teddy Rocks, but also has a bit of a hold over me, so we'll just change the subject. Still my absolute favorite thing as a kid. When did you put the other tapes in like that many tapes? Yeah? But did you put in like your Mega death tapes? Oh? Yeah, well no, it was um guy with Michael W. Smith. Well that's not evil at all. Takes on a whole different feel when you put in like some satan music. Did you hear that? Holy cal al right? When I said satan music, there's this huge thunderclap. It's been great. I don't know if you guys can hear it on my end, but it's still going. It's been going. That was the big one, the first big one I've heard in this recording, and you just right after you said that. So we know that when people go to visit Robert at this museum, they some some people will still report that they've experienced something they can explain, and a lot of people right to the doll after visiting him, isn't that correct? That's right. Apology letters are often written to Robert for visiting him without his permission. If you go to many YouTube videos about Robert the Doll, you will see in the comments section, post after after post after post of people saying, hey, sorry, Robert, just we want to learn about your story. Didn't mean to disturb you or you know, sorry for watching or learning about you without your permissions. One joking about that earlier, I for one, would like to extend a heartfelt apology to Robert for all the terrible things I said earlier in the podcast. So please for my humblest apologies, Robert, and please please forgive me. Forgive me, Robert. I hope you're doing well. I feel no need to apologize to you. Um I do wish you the best, but I will call that you seem to be treated better than a lot of human beings these days. Throwing shade at Robert. I'm so glad that we have an image like looking behind you, Ben, so when Robert just kind of creeps up behind your shoulder, we'll be able to give you just a split second warning. That's not a ding That's not a ding on Robert. That's a ding on the human species treat each other better, you know what I mean? Who else should you be apologizing to folks anyway? That's anyway anyway. Those are the circumstances. We just thought that's an interesting story because it shows that there's not just one example of this. In fact, there are multiple other examples. There's Letter the Doll in Australia, there's Okiku in Japan. The list goes on and on. So we have these caces of things that pre date Annabel, the most famous haunted doll, by a bit. But the truth of the matter is that the story goes much much deeper. You see, haunted dolls, or some version of them, date back into antiquity. What are we talking about. We'll tell you afterward from our sponsors. We're back and we're going back in time. We're going far far earlier than the turn of the twentie century. We're going far far past the creation of the US. We're looking at early civilization, the earliest predecessors of things like Annabelle and Robert. We're effigies. There was something called poppets p O p p e t s and folklore. These are dolls that are made to represent a specific person for a specific reason. Uh, and they were created by all sorts of early civilizations. Yeah, it wasn't there a thing about poppets in the Crucible about that being sort of a witchy item, a puppet, And if I'm not mistaken, it's something that you hear kind of stylized, which is say, oh, my poppets, my little poppet, referring to children they're about to eat or something. But yeah, no, I'm pretty sure that was definitely a cursed object or it was in our our item in the Crucible that maybe was tied back to the bewitching of of many of these children in them in the village. Yeah, yeah, you're correct. There's a cousin to the poppet that we're going to talk about. That's basically the thing that you probably have in your mind even while we're talking about them, if you are not remembering the crucible stuff. But but these were made all over the place. We're talking rome Um in Africa, West Africa and Egypt. These these puppets were used or these specific types of effigies um and a lot of times it wasn't necessarily for a bad thing. That's what's kind of cool about these. Sometimes it was almost like us, like a sin eater, spirit eater kind of thing, where the poppet could help somebody, like you could remove a curse from somebody by using one of these things. You could heal somebody perhaps by using one of these things. And if it was made of, you know, a specific human, specific person. But the other thing is, and this is where the kind of cousin to it comes in. You could perhaps make one of a person and then curse the doll, and then it would imbue that curse into the actual person that it represented, right, break the legs, put nails into the eyes, things things of that nature. That's correct. Versions of this practice continue in the modern day, it's not you know, as widespread and the right you hear that or is it? Yeah, this is the perfect weather to record this. So versions of it do continue, they're probably just not as widespread. Uh, we do at this point we want to make an important statement about so called voodoo dolls, and that is the cousin that I was referring to. Got it, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can find them in novelty stores. There's even a couple of like instructible or wicki how articles about how to make your own legit ones. Uh. The term voodoo doll usually describes several different kinds of effigy creation and these different cultures across the world. But to be absolutely clear, these kinds of things don't really have a prominent place in Haitian voodoo or Louisiana voodoo, which are two distinct yet related actual religions. So the a lot of the conflation of um, these sorts of effigies with the practices of that we would term loosely voodoo, uh, come about from racism in the past. This this is more this was probably more common like the people practicing that kind of stuff in the crucible or being accused of doing so. They're being accused of having a lineage dating back to European uh, pre Christian or pagan practices. It's it's just it's a very important distinction. Dolls are not the only thing that has been alleged to be haunted. They steal the spotlight today, but let's remember fiction is full of things like haunted cars, a love of Stephen King's, haunted boxes, haunted houses, haunted shoes, etcetera. It turns out there is an entire cottage industry of haunted objects out there today. And thanks to the great work by a New York Times journalist, Alicia De Santis, uh, you can take a closer look at this subculture that is selling haunted items on eBay, and they want to give you an opportunity to buy one. Uh spoiler. Most of them are dolls, but there's other stuff too there. I'll give you an example right here. I am looking at an active item for sale right now. It is titled Haunted Active Dolls Paranormal Spirit of Vanessa, and it is a It looks like an American girl doll, maybe a little maybe even a little better made. I don't know the craftsmanship on American Girl Dolls is very high. But this looks pretty incredible. The blue eyes are haunting. Here we go. Uh, I found one that I was I was reading earlier. Just I just felt the vibe of this gothic cursed item devil Satan, legia board, baffroom, that paranormal psychic tarot. That is a winning combination there, my friend on itemte watchers right now. Yeah, it's all one night. It's only fifty five bucks o bio or best offer. So for that in fourteen dollars shipping, you could get all those keywords together today. That's like a cursed tur ducan is. Yeah, that's say it cursed your ducket. Uh, dude, I just you guys, I'm looking at I don't know what this is. It's an authentic bo that's a that's a gremlin or goblin from the Jewish faith. I'm not mistaken. You are correct, a malevolent spirit that can enter and possess the body of a living person unless they're exercise. And uh, there's an idea that has something in common with the myths about jen that they could be restrained in a specific type of container under the correct type of ritual. Well, there are a lot of these for sale on eBay. Can you can you imagine like what it must be like on like the dark web, that's where the real stuff is. Yeah, so you can you can go and see this stuff yourself right now. And if you peruse e Bay like Noel, Matt and I are doing, you'll find everything from haunted jewelry too, haunted ups boxes for some reason, feathers, pieces of frankly ordinary looking wood. But the sentis has uh has something to note about this. I like the way she put it. She said that they might be said not to be haunted so much as enchanted for specific reasons for luck, for fortune. Uh that you have to you have to have a positive environment, you have to have a good attitude when you're handling this stuff, and that not all good luck applies the same. So there are notes in these things. Are these biddings where they'll say things like this chip is for money luck only, not general good fortune or finding love, which are different spells. And one thing that I one thing I enjoyed was the disclaimers, because you know, when you buy a lot of stuff online, you will see the fine print and the notices, Like someone will say Okay, hey, this is PS five or whatever, but it ships without the box. Or I've got this, um, I've got this g I Joe, but it doesn't have the little backpack. They are there are things like this on the paranormal listings, and they say stuff like, quote as required per Ebase policy on the sale of paranormal items. This is for the sale of the tangible item only, no promise of a spirit attached. Sorry, sorry, it's yeah, this is just the box to be cleared. Yeah. The the complaints can give you a chuckle to because there are people who are you know, seem to be genuinely concerned that shipping this item may disassociate it from the spirit or they feel like they ordered something believing it to be paranormal or inhabited by something and they're just not catching any any Jeff Goldblue Mask vibes off of it, so they think that it's um. Now, the typical there is a typical response to from the sellers. They say, it takes time. You have to spend time with it, you have to be familiar with it so that feels comfortable enough, you know, to speak with you. You know what we should do been we should build a panopticon and then in every cell put one of these haunted objects and lock it in there, and then you know, just observe them with cameras and other sensors for I don't know, twenty years something like that. Yeah, I think we could. We could probably work a work something like that out in the show budget. Uh, folks, me volunteers, let us know what your favorite haunted objects are that could occupy our panopticon. Extra points for a big Mickey esque figure, yeah, or a like a fridge that you know survived an earthquake or something, or a building collapse and then if you if you there is a person actively looking at it, it does something. We're like, Uh, a telephone that's that is detached but still speaks to forces beyond our dimension. Yeah, that would be amazing. Or a microwave, just like a badass crazy microwave. I don't know it just can't you know. It's like the Wolverine of the crew. I don't know. Um, the brave little toaster was haunted, Ben, Do you think he was somehow embodied by some sort of malevol a spear. I mean, I know he was brave and super cute, but toasts aren't supposed to hop around like that and go exploring, going on adventures. Even the Ghostbusters Toaster just kind of jumped around a little. Yeah, I don't know, I would be all four haunted kitchen appliances. As a matter of fact, that's gonna kind of come into play, because we have a twist for you at the end of this, folks. But here we have it as it stands. Ancient folklore spiritual practices live on co modified to a degree due to the nature of the society in which we live. Some people just doubtlessly enjoy the stories. I mean, it's cool, you know, like, hey, I got this haunted according on eBay, that's a true story of my part. It was advertised as haunted, and I was like, the price is right. Uh if I haunted they meant some of the reeds were broken, then yes, I guess it is haunted. But but other people, you know, really enjoy the mythology of these things. And then some people truly do believe there's something inexplicable and supernatural a foot. We can say there's psychology you behind it, definitely right, there's this urgent need to anthropomorphize everything because it's our way of explaining the familiarity or discomfort we feel around certain objects. Like almost everybody has a lucky insert here, right, this is my lucky hat. These are these are my this is my lucky shirt kind of thing, right, mostly underwear, but yeah, mostly underwear. Yeah, this is these are my These are my business under ruse. These are my going out under ruse. These are my business Tommy John's of two Flight of the Concords. Uh. It makes sense then, though, doesn't it, Guys that dolls would be so prominent in this kind of folklore because they already looked just enough, like for sure, I I wonder, I wonder if you guys are doing this more recently actually anthropomorphy rising stuff in your house or or any of you guys doing that right now? I always have the one more ifies the backs of trucks that they have faces on them. Let's see, like, yeah, and cars are designed in the in the front end at least a look kind of like face. Like you could just have one big headlight that goes across. You could have three, you could have eight and have like a spider looking car, but no two and a grill, little mouth, little face as their hurdles towards you at eight five plus miles an hour and you have just enough time to go. Ah, I'm wondering. I'm wondering all about the backs of truck backs of trucks. Yeah, like a semi semi you sort of have like you know, the seam going down the back of it is like the bridge of the nose, and then like the little guardrail is sort of the nose. And sometimes it's like mud flaps are like the teeth kind of you know what I mean. Okay, I see it. So are the are the doors the loading doors for the trailer they like big eyes or they more like the cheek area. It depends. It depends on where the lights are attached and whether they're in the's any signage or anything that adds to the illusion. But yeah, they certainly can be ben they can be cheeks. Um. I'm having a hard time explaining it. Something you just have to see for yourself. But be on the lookout next time you're stuck behind a semi. Just look for the face, LORI, for any anyone LORI. Indeed. Uh. One of the last thing for me is even those little hooks you used to hang coats on. They look like drunken octopuses that are trying to put their dukes up to fight with you. M I saw it. It's something they're reading about that they can't unsee it. It's like, especially when they're screwed in with two screws and they're offset a little bit, so it's like one of them is kind of like a little bit little it's a drunk Yeah, yeah, it's trunk ard octopus. But we all have things like this. There's so many things that you have probably encountered in your life where you thought that looks like a ace, that looks like a figure, a humanoid figure, And that's because your brain has been evolved to see those sorts of patterns. So, like I'll admit, during this pandemic, as you said, Matt, we all kind of because we were in a smaller environment most of the time, we may have accelerated some of this anthropomorphization. About eight months in, you know, I looked around. I realized all this in my kitchen has a personality. Now there's the good bowl, the trustworthy one, you know what I mean. There's there's there's the fork, there's kind of bold, it has panash and then there's that one spoon. You can't trust it. There's that one spoon. It's the Judas spoon. And that's like, clearly, that's just psychology. Maybe that's just the force of boredom and a bottle. We're all just terribly damaged by all of this. But it's okay. I think it's gonna stay with us. I think no one is still going to be seeing truck faces. I think all our listeners are gonna still see weird things and like vacuums or trash can lids that open up like mouths, and uh yeah, I don't trust that spoon, and I know it knows what it did. So for now, the answer to Canton object be haunted seems to be primarily something like, yes, at least it can be haunted by the human need to explain the inexplicable and to create personalities as a way of defining our own self perceived relationships with things. And yes, of course copy If science achieves a breakthrough improves that non physical events can indeed leave impact on physical objects, this changes everything. This changes absolutely everything. We'll have to redo this episode until then. Right now, as as much of a bummer as it is, to say it. There is no proof, universally accepted proof of genuinely haunted objects. But there is one last twist, something we wanted to save until the end. In the very near future, we may have haunted objects. Fellow conspiracy realists, We may very well build our own ghost. Uh. Yes, we may build ourselves into ghosts or build a ghost out of some I think it will be some very very smart person that we want to keep around to be like, no, don't go. We we we need you still. We need to know what we need to do next. Um, so you know, Mark Zuckerberg or somebody anyway, But no, it's it's so true because we've talked about this before. In our attempts to achieve immortality in some way or another, we are using computer simulations, attempts at computer simulation and very very very fast computers with tons of memory to be able to simulate a person or a consciousness. And we've we've been attempting to do this and we may perfect it. Yeah, which is terrifying. Should be terrified. If you're if you're more excited than you than terrified, then congratulations. Kind of like me and we both have a lot of stuff we should work on. In that case, Yeah, Matt, you're on the money. The first truly haunted object on the way is probably not a dusty stuffed animal. It's probably not some cursed spear from an ancient war. Will instead be the result of something called whole brain emulation or w b E, the idea of uploading the entirety of human brain, modeling it thoughts, memories, feelings, personalities, putting it on a hard drive, putting it in the cloud. This is a possibility. There are now like conceptually we can understand, we we can understand how it would be done. We can see the horizon where this occurs. We have a lot of technological hurdles there, we have a lot of ethical hurdles that we haven't considered yet. The main, the main obstacle right now, ship of thesis aside, is that first we have to manage to achieve something called the connect dome, just like connect O m E. A complete map of the human brain. Uh. We have been able to do one complete map of one creature. It's a nematode, so we know it can be done in theory. But a nematode has about three neurads. Human brain has about eight six billion, so we can't. We don't know how to map. We just need a couple of thousand more years and we'll be there. We'll be good. Well, we'd also want to map a living human brain, right ethics socide. Would it be easier to map a living human brain if you didn't have to worry about what happened to that brain? Yeah, I know it gets sticky really quickly. And I was gonna say, I'm wondering if there's some kind of because obviously it's our inability to see into the brain, deep into the brain enough with enough resolution to be able to pick out those, you know, each neural pathway, because then you could definitely get a pretty cool image of brains just by scanning them. But it's not the same thing as looking at, like you said, all of the neurons, right, and we uh, you know, the tools we have, things like m R I and so on. It's exactly as you described. There's just not the level of sophistication we need here. But if someone can map a brain and all its interconnections, the next step would be trying to make an emulation of it that could run, you know, run the copy of Paul Mission Control decond creating something that will call a substrate independent mind, or to be cut about it, a sim this sim could exist, then it would inherently be conscious, even if we don't understand what consciousness is for us. It would be literally a ghost in the machine. For now, this is hypothetical. For now, this is hypothetical, but the technology and the research are continuing at a breakneck pace. I think it's very optimistic that that you say, the first immortal, the first ghost, first thing to haunt an object like this, might be one of the world's smartest people. I intended to say, I think it would be one of the world's wealthiest people who was terrified of dying. What do you guys think about that? I think my example would hold true for probably both of those. Yeah, yeah, did nail it on that one. Then that's exactly I can't remember which season of West World it is, but that's exactly one of the main plot points in one of the HBO's West World seasons where it's essentially ghosts in the machine. It's it's physical, well, it's programs that are software built into hardware that then the software gets transferred as a ghost into a server where now they only exists exist virtually, but it's the full consciousness of that of those at one point physical beings. Wow, that's interesting, like San Junipero. Right, Uh, this there, there's a reason that fiction centers on this kind of stuff and orbits, these sort of concepts, you know, science fiction in particulars. The genre is often prescient and in one way or another. So don't be surprised if, uh, within your lifetimes, humanity finally has the haunted dolls it has loved and feared since the dawn of recorded time. They may just end up being computers. At one of those ghosts one day might be you. So what do you think, folks, have you had any experience with mysterious or cursed objects? Let us know where what objects appeared at, personalities and faces for you, that's that's a very interesting question to write. Oh and if you if you have those things, like, I want to see pictures of the thing from your point of view, I definitely want to see that. I'll take a picture of the container that holds all my dog food that has a giant flap on it, and it's exactly how you described it, Ben. It totally talks and yeah, it's it's pretty amazing. Does it have its own favorite dog food? Oh? Yeah, it gets so upset if I give it the grain free stuff because it's like, you know, this is bad for these dogs, and I'm like, god, man, it's talking trash to you. It's like, oh, oh, Frederick came to play today. Well guess what, buddy, no games. I thought green free dog food was good for my dogs. I thought that's how it worked, but apparently it's not. So sorry, and send us, yes, send us your favorite pictures of things that appear to have faces. Bonus points if they are trucks, automobiles, uh, send us to your classics and let us let us know seriously what you think about what we've touched on here. And if you believe that you have found a genuinely haunted object or you have witnessed one, of course we want to hear about it. We try to make it easy to find us online. That's where you can find us on Facebook, On Twitter, where were conspiracy stuff or conspiracy Stuff show? On Instagram, you can also join our Facebook group Here's where it Gets Crazy. Just navigate over to Facebook, type in Here's where it gets Crazy and answer a couple of super basic questions and any listener the show should be able to answer and you're in lots of fun, memory and discussion to be had. And hey, while you're on the internet, why don't you cover to Apple podcast and write us a review for the show that really helps people discover the show and helps us get ranked on that old Apple podcast chart. That's right. Also, don't forget to go to YouTube dot com slash conspiracy stuff. That's where you can see videos of these conversations and episodes, and you can also subscribe. Tell your friends, make sure you click the buttons that alert you when new episodes come out. I don't know which ones those are, but you'll figure it out. If you don't want to do that stuff, you can always give us a call. That's correct. If you feel like you have more of an oral storyteller, then why not dial u up at one eight three three std w y t K. You have three minutes. Those three minutes are yours. Tell us who you are, tell us what you want us to call you, and if it's okay to do so on air, let us know what's on your mind. And if you have a message that you would prefer to just keep between us and the stuff that want you new a team and let us know at the end. Most importantly, don't censor yourself. If you have something that deserves more than three minutes, then by all means, please write out the full account. We read every email we get. We're grateful for all of them. You can send us yourself a good old fashioned email where we are conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you to know is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.