FT265

My wife and I, along with our five-year-old son and our new baby, shared a single bedroom and loft in San Francisco, near the beach. The bedroom opened directly to the living room, and had no door. One night, some time around 1995, I came home from work, walked through the living room towards the kitchen where my wife was cooking dinner. Our older son was in the backyard and the baby was asleep. As I passed the bedroom, I noticed a new addition to my wife’s collect­ion of stuffed animals. A large, (at least three foot tall) Raggedy Ann doll sitting on the bed, facing the bedroom entrance.

I walked to the kitchen, said hello to my wife, and made some small talk. After a moment or two, I asked where she had gotten the new Ragg­edy Ann doll. My wife looked at me blankly. She had no idea what I was talking about. She gave me a look as if there were large lobsters crawling out my ears. I repeated myself, but she still didn’t understand, so I dragged her to the bedroom doorway to show her the doll.

There was no doll. The hair on the back of my neck stood to attent­ion. Less than five minutes earlier, a rather large Raggedy Ann doll had been there, and no one could have moved it, as they would have had to walk past me to get to the bedroom. The more I thought about it, the more freaky the whole scenario seemed. The doll had been looking right at me, with those big, black, empty Raggedy Ann button eyes, and smiling in the way for which that type of doll is famous.

I have no explanation for this occurrence. If I had hallucinated a stuffed animal, what on earth would have made me see that doll? Why not a bear, a cat, or any number of animals? Raggedy Ann dolls have a distinctive look, and are not easily mistaken for another doll. I have never been able to look at Raggedy Ann (or Andy) quite the same since then. These dolls now creep me out, and probably always will!

Dirk Pierce
Palm Harbor, Florida