When Toys Are Possessed

Many of you have probably experienced strange incidents with toys.  Sometimes, they make random noises. Sometimes, something moves.  I don't know about you, but it makes me feel a little weird when this happens.

The primary culprit in our house is a baby doll that I call "Creepy Baby," and now, Anna even calls her that too. Like many baby dolls, she has batteries that enable her to coo and laugh and move her head.  Except when she moves her head, it looks, and sounds, totally unnatural. Creepy Baby's head slowly turns and whirs like a robot.

Kinda scary, isn't she?

But that's not half as disconcerting as her seemingly supernatural, electrical connection.  We first noticed this when we turned on the light in our entry way, and at the same time, Creepy Baby's head moved.  Nobody had touched her, Anna wasn't playing with her....but we heard the tell-tale noise and looked as her head slowly moved from side to side.  We then turned the light off, figuring it had just been a fluke, but nope, she did it again.

What's up with that?!

I'm not sure how many of you, if any believe in ghosts, spirits, mediums and things of that nature.  I can tell you I harbored no such beliefs for a long time. But I have had some experiences (and so have other people in my life) that have made me revise my thinking.

I don't know what's going on with Creepy Baby, but earlier this year, I did have what may have been a supernatural experience with another of Anna's toys.

It was around 3:00 in the morning (isn't there something in scary movies about 3:00 or 3:30 a.m.?). Heidi, Anna and I were fast asleep, when suddenly, a piercing noise jolted me awake. We live on the same street at the police and fire departments, and it sounded shrill, like a siren from a vehicle racing down our street.

But even in my sleepy stupor, it didn't take me long to realize it was not actually a siren. No, this noise was coming from inside our house. Even Heidi, a very sound sleeper, heard it....and she made me investigate. Thanks a lot!

From ishashekinah.blogspot.com

I hesitantly walked down the dark hallway, which seemed longer than usual, and was able to track the noise to our living room. The room was completely empty. Nobody other than the 3 of us was in the house on that particular night.

At that time, Anna's toy box was in our living room across from the couch. I stared for a minute, then slowly approached the box.  The noise got louder. It was piercing but was stopped intermittently by static.

At last, I found the culprit:  Anna's Elmo walkie talkie. There were two, Elmo and Cookie Monster, and they had not been used for quite some time. The Elmo one was sitting on top of the pile as it wailed away....but it was not touching any other toy. Hmm.  I touched it, and it stopped making the noise.

You too can own creepy walkie talkies - go to amazon.com!

But what could've caused it?   I could tell by looking that no other toy had fallen against it and hit the talk switch on its side. Could Emmett have bumped against it?

I paused and turned my head toward Emmett's dog crate to see if perhaps he had mistakenly been left out of it at the end of the night. (Back then, he slept in the crate and did not roam freely at night because he ate part of our old couch, but that's a story for another day.) But no, he was resting comfortably on his pillow inside the crate. He was looking around anxiously too, presumably wondering what the heck was making so much racket.  Clearly, there was no way he could have set off the walkie talkie.

Wasn't me....zzzzz

Since there was nothing I could really figure out, I went back to bed, trying to shake the creepy feeling that had washed over me.  When I was finally able to fall asleep again, I dreamed about my Granddad.  He and I had been extremely close when I was younger, but he died when I was 12. He was a remarkable man and I adored and admired him. I took the loss very hard and needed several years of fairly intense grieving, writing about it, and visiting his grave, for the loss to seem somewhat easier to bear.

Me with Granddad and Mom, a loooong time ago

But I am in my 30s now. Although he has always felt like a part of me, I could not recall ever having dreamed about him, even when I was younger. In any event, I dreamed that I received a long lost letter from him, which was postmarked 1989, the year of his death.  Apparently, it had been lost in the mail until 2011 - which is not unheard of, actually.  The letter was obviously very old and it was written to me as if I was still a child.

Predictably, that's when I woke up. I couldn't for the life of me remember what the letter said, which was frustrating.  I felt a chill realizing that the dream had come just after the unexplained shrieking noise from Anna's walkie talkie. 

Interestingly, I rarely dream, and when I do, I almost never remember my dreams - perhaps someone wanted me to remember this one?  Could this, perhaps, be his way of contacting me? Maybe....although using an Elmo walkie talkie as the vehicle for that connection seemed a tad funny. But he did have a great sense of humor....

I shrugged it off as just a cool story....until I received a Facebook message from my uncle several months later. In it, he informed me that he was helping my Grandma pack up her things so she could move. And he found an old letter from my Granddad to me, which apparently was never mailed. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

Several days later, the long lost letter finally reached its destination.  Sure enough, it had my name and the address at which I was living in the1980s on the envelope. Inside was a note enclosing some stamps, as my Granddad was a stamp collector and was starting me in that hobby before he passed away. He developed a sudden, serious illness near the end of his life, so I assume he just never had the chance to send it.

This is one of those experiences that makes me believe supernatural forces really exist, and that those who have gone before try to communicate with us and, hopefully, are watching out for us. I've never had an experience like this one before - but I was meant to receive that letter.

While it was really awesome, it was a little disconcerting in the moment. Between Elmo and the Creepy Baby, I'll try to take these things into account when making future toy purchases.

Do you believe that our late loved ones can stay connected with us? Have any of you had similar experiences, toy-related or not? If so, please share them in the comments!